Bob Taylor I was 10 the year this came out; I remember seeing the trailer (on TV?) and thinking it must be wonderfully salacious. Seeing it for the first time today, I can say it is wonderfully sexy, even erotic in a restrained way. The Code was weaker by the late 50's, but you still couldn't show sexual positions--Norman and Allison are vertical on that rock, not horizontal.The excitement is verbal more than physical: Cross haranguing his stepdaughter Selena, before raping her. Rossi berating Constance for her coldness to him, just after she delivers the memorable line about men always being the same at heart, even if the situation changes. Norman and Allison circle around each other coolly, as do Rodney and Betty, not wishing to commit themselves for fear of parental disapproval, which comes anyway.Lana Turner and Diane Varsi are excellent as mother and daughter. Russ Tamblyn outshines the rest of the young actors easily. I guess they couldn't get Rock Hudson for Rossi and had to settle for a nobody--it's a shame. Lloyd Nolan gives it all he's got in the courtroom scene. This is one of my favourite films from the 50's.

Gideon24 Peyton Place is the 1957 classic based on Grace Metalious' best seller about sex, sin, and secrets in a small New Hampshire town.Despite John Michael Hayes' somewhat watered down screenplay, the spirit of Metalious' steamy novel still pervades as we watch small town morality being challenged and championed at every turn. This glossy soap opera weaves multiple stories and characters to great effect. Lana Turner heads the all-star cast as Constance MacKenzie, the owner of a dress shop and mother of 18-year old Allison (Diane Varsi) a sensitive teen who dreams of being a writer and has a mad crush on Norman Page (Russ Tamblyn) who Allison has been throwing herself at without much success. Allison's best friend is Selena Cross (Hope Lange) who works in Constance's dress shop, even though she lives on the wrong side of the tracks with her drunken stepfather Lucas (Arthur Kennedy). Rodney Harrington (Barry Coe) constantly butts head with his father (Leon Ames) over his romance with the town tramp, Betty Anderson(Terry Moore). Lee Phillips plays Michael Rossi, a newcomer to Peyton Place who has been hired as the new high school principal, a job that all the students were sure would go to beloved English teacher Ellie Thornton (Mildred Dunnock), who finds himself attracted to Constance MacKenzie.Despite John Michael Hayes' somewhat watered down screenplay, the spirit of Metalious' steamy novel still pervades as we watch small town morality being challenged and championed at every turn. This glossy soap opera weaves multiple stories and characters to great effect. Lana Turner heads the all-star cast as Constance MacKenzie, the owner of a dress shop and mother of 18-year old Allison (Diane Varsi) a sensitive teen who dreams of being a writer and has a mad crush on Norman Page (Russ Tamblyn) who Allison has been throwing herself at without much success. Allison's best friend is Selena Cross (Hope Lange) who works in Constance's dress shop, even though she lives on the wrong side of the tracks with her drunken stepfather Lucas (Arthur Kennedy). Rodney Harrington (Barry Coe) constantly butts head with his father (Leon Ames) over his romance with the town tramp, Betty Anderson(Terry Moore). Lee Phillips plays Michael Rossi, a newcomer to Peyton Place who has been hired as the new high school principal, a job that all the students were sure would go to beloved English teacher Ellie Thornton (Mildred Dunnock), who finds himself attracted to Constance MacKenzie.There are some dated elements here, but this film pretty much invented the genre known as soap opera and a few years later, in addition to a sequel, would become the first prime time television soap opera, which was actually broadcast two days a week.Mark Robson's sensitive direction is a big plus and the cast is first rate. Lana Turner received her one and only Oscar nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress for her work here. Varsi, Lange, Kennedy, and Tamblyn also received supporting nominations. If you're a sucker for good old fashioned melodrama, have your fill here. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

mark.waltz Peyton Place isn't really a city. It's a state of mind, set in various decades with characters in parallel universes. This explains two movies (one "Return to"), two soap operas (one "Return to") and two TV movies where characters from the first soap opera (on prime-time) long believed dead came back or had their pasts re-written for dramatic effect.The original film of "Peyton Place", though, takes place in the early 1940's in the beautiful New Hampshire town where the fall leaf changes are among the most beautiful in the country and a white church with a steeple makes it appear like a Norman Rockwell painting. But the people live more like Norman Maine or Norman Bates, their problems so deep that even people that never saw "Peyton Place" would hear someone's personal real-life soap opera and say, "That sounds like something out of Peyton Place!".Every major character in this seems to be living a lie, and so-called noble characters are judgmental hypocrites who leave Sunday church service to go to the local eatery for a gossip fest. That is except the good ole' Doc Swain (Lloyd Nolan), a noble man who knows everybody's secrets in town yet never spreads a word about anybody. Even Lucas Cross (Arthur Kennedy) gets his secrets kept, and he's guilty of raping and impregnating his step-daughter, Selena (Hope Lange).The glue of the story is Lana Turner's Constance McKenzie, a beautiful but sexually frustrated "widow" with a teenaged daughter (Diane Varsi) about to graduate from high school. There's already scandal as the film opens, and its really minor, the hiring of a newcomer to town, Michael Rossi (Lee Philips), who gets the position of principal over the beloved long-time teacher (Mildred Dunnock).This is a movie which focuses on the problems of the teenagers, all of those issues associated with something concerning their messed up parents. Wealthy Leslie Harrington (Leon Ames) dominates his son Rodney (Barry Coe), objecting to his choice of girlfriend Betty Anderson (Terry Moore), while Mrs. Evelyn Paige (Erin O'Brien-Moore) seems evident on keeping her son Norman (Russ Tamblyn) a virgin. Gossipy Marion Partridge (Peg Hillias) is the Gladys Kravitz ("Bewitched's resident gossip) of the community with her husband Charles (Staats Cotwsworth) admonishing her every time he catches her on the phone in lowered voice.In other words, this is a really screwed-up town, and like "King's Row", you expect a sign to indicate that this is a great place to raise your children. Doc Swain sees every promising high school graduate leaving as fast as they can, and that happens in droves when Pearl Harbor is bombed and the young men go off to war. Poor Selena gets the bulk of the second half of the drama with her handling of step-father Lucas. That's after her mother (Betty Field) takes the easy way out of dealing with all of the issues that have been cropping up.Lana Turner is simply the lead because she's the biggest name in the film, her on-screen footage equal to pretty much everybody else's. Still, she got a Best Actress Academy Award Nomination with a bunch of supporting performers also nominated. Overall, the cast is worthy of an ensemble award, and Turner had better performances that were totally overlooked. Among the supporting cast, Kennedy and Lange stand out, his abusive drunken father absolutely hateful but Kennedy playing him as if he was reciting Shakespeare.This is beautifully filmed, and in addition to the TV versions and movie sequels it also spawned other trashy novels to be adapted to the screen, most notably "From the Terrace", "The Best of Everything" and "Valley of the Dolls", all from 20th Century Fox. Mark Robson ("Champion") seems an odd choice to direct the epitome of a woman's flick, but since soap operas on TV were just catching on, the big screen thought it could grab into the ballgame as well. It is not a great film, but it certainly ranks as a classic, if only for the franchise that it started.

Irie212 When you consider the definition of soap opera-- "A drama characterized by stock characters and situations, sentimentality, and melodrama"—plenty of variously admirable movies come to mind, including Oscar winners from the very first, "Seventh Heaven," through more recent movies like "Terms of Endearment." "Peyton Place" is certainly a soap opera, but not an admirable film. The litany of flaws would take more than the 1,000 words IMDb allows, and would require every synonym for mundane. The characters are so uniformly mutton-headed that I inferred extensive inbreeding in Peyton Place. The cockeyed motivations of two particular characters-- actually, make that four-- serve as proof: First: Selena Cross is facing trial for murdering Lucas Cross, her sexually abusive stepfather. She begs Dr. Swain not to come to her defense by testifying that she had miscarried Cross's child years before. Her reason? She's in love with a soldier named Ted, and believes that his life would be ruined if her secret were revealed. She argues-- get this-- that she'd rather face life in prison than live without Ted. And Dr. Swain, as dim-witted a physician as I ever hope to encounter, doesn't suggest that Ted deserves to be given a chance to hear the truth and prove himself mature and compassionate (and if he isn't, does she want him?), let alone point out the screamingly obvious fact that life in prison would also be life without Ted.Second: Allison MacKenzie wants to be a novelist. She shows a few short stories to her high school principal. He likes them but with reservations, and he sensibly recommends that she go to college. But she doesn't want to go to college. She doesn't want to read stuff like Shakespeare. She wants to find out about writing for herself, at a typewriter. Her naive passion persuades him, so he takes her to the newspaper editor. Who hires her. And Allison goes on to write crap like "Peyton Place." The End.