Peyton Place

Peyton Place is just like any small town in America, full of gossipers, scandal, homicide, suicide, alcoholism, horny teenagers and incest hiding behind a façade of tranquility. The movie follows a handful of individuals, teenagers and adults alike, as they navigate through the many hardships of their intertwining lives. It plays very much like a short form soap opera complete with angst, depression, interpersonal relationships, physical and sexual abuse. On top of all this is the gossip that can ruin someone as one scandalous act can destroy a person’s life once it is outed in public. A lack of human decency is one of the many themes bandied around in this film, called out and condemned literally in the final reel. 

The movie Peyton Place is based on the 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious. That novel contained many more explicit moments that could not be adapted for the film in large part due to the Hays code. Many would criticize the film for this but even as released it was plenty salacious. What it couldn’t outright show it skirted right up to the edge with. There is a sexual assault scene midway through the film and an attempted repeat of that assault towards the end that ends in murder. Both are shown with the details of the attack somewhat obscured to avoid being censored without losing the horrors of the act itself. This is a typical small town, the type most of us have visited or lived in at some point in time and things like this happen all the time. 

The story follows many people but there are a few key ones that make up the bulk of it. The first of these is Allison MacKenzie (Diane Varsi), daughter to single mother Constance (Lana Turner). Allison is smart and conscientious but clashes with her mother who always seems to think her daughter is doing things she shouldn’t. This goes back to a time when Constance left Peyton Place and moved in with a married man who died, leaving her with an illegitimate daughter. For years Constance has been lying to her daughter about the father, protecting, and sheltering her, too. 

Constance employs Nellie Cross (Betty Field), the downtrodden wife of alcoholic Lucas (Arthur Kennedy), as her housekeeper. Her daughter, Lucas’ stepdaughter,  Selena (Hope Lange), is best friends with Allison. While the MacKenzies live a comfortable life, the Crosses are impoverished, living in a rundown shack while Lucas drinks away any money they do get. One evening Lucas comes home, drunk as usual, and rapes his stepdaughter, impregnating her. The town doctor finds out how she got pregnant and forces Lucas to sign a confession and leave town lest he release the proof of the assault. Before leaving, Lucas attempts to attack Selena but she escapes, getting injured and miscarrying in the process. Nellie hangs herself from the shame of the whole affair.

Newly hired principal Michael Rossi (Lee Philips) has fallen in love with Constance MacKenzie. She, on the other hand, fears men, seeing in them only what she experienced with Allison’s father, and pushes him away at every opportunity. One evening she allows Allison to invite friends over for her birthday only to return home and find them, her daughter included, making out to slow music in the dark. Fearing her daughter getting knocked up the way she herself did, Constance overreacts, kicking everyone out of the house. She has a fight with Allison and in that fight reveals the true nature of how Allison was conceived. Upset, Allison cuts back at her mother, hurting her deeply and moves out, taking a bus to New York City, the same way her mother had all those years ago. 

When Lucas returns back to Peyton Place he finds his wife has killed herself from the shame of what he had done to his stepdaughter. He also finds Selena and her younger brother still living in the old shack, now cleaned up and somewhat respectable. He attempts to assault her again and she clubs him over the head with a firewood log, bludgeoning him to death. At first she buries him, intent on hiding his death. Later she will confess and be brought to trial for his murder. Fearing public scrutiny and shaming, she refuses to admit to the true atrocities he has wrought on her even though that truth would justify her actions in protecting herself. 

There are other, more  minor, stories that fill out the narrative but those are the ones that matter the most overall. This is a story about a town in general with close-ups of just a few of the stories. The book spent more time on the incidental characters but a book can afford that luxury whereas a film is constrained by time. There is one character who represents the gossipers, though: Marion Partridge (Peg Hillias), who is always catching someone in some scandalous act and getting on the phone to tell everyone what she saw with her own eyes. At one point she claims to have seen Allison and Norman (Russ Tamblyn), a boy with a domineering mother who forbids the relationship, skinny dipping. This scandalous gossip reaches the ears of Constance who, without evidence, assumes the worst of her daughter. It is one of the key reasons Allison moves out. Late in the film, during Selena’s trial the star witness for the defense, the doctor, calls out all the gossip. Marion, unrepentant, just looks unapologetic in the face of this.

There is something about small town America where everybody knows everybody else and everything is everybody’s business and a scandal can be held over your head forever. The young leave for better pastures while the rest just stay there and continue the status quo, never changing or evolving. The doctor calls this out, too, chastising the towns people for taking the young for granted. People like Selena have no opportunities to leave and so a bad reputation could easily ruin her chances for marriage and a good life. This knowledge led to her mother’s suicide and her own refusal to speak up about the sexual assault even in the face of imprisonment. The doctor’s words call out the whole town and feels like the filmmakers sermonizing and summing up the entire film all at the same time. Peyton Place was nominated for nine Academy Awards but didn’t win a single one. It does a good job pointing the finger at the clannish hypocrisy of small towns but descends into moralizing in the finale, wrapping things up a little too simply for my liking. Selena escapes the town’s scrutiny, thanks to the doctor, and Allison reconciles with her mother and has started her own serious relationship with Norman. Even Constance has managed to get over her fear of men and gotten together with Michael. All of this tidying up of storylines plays out in the last five minutes, closing a rather long movie very quickly and leaving no dangling plot threads for a sequel to latch on to. Of course, a sequel came anyway.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Motion Picture: Jerry Wald

Best Director: Mark Robson

Best Actress: Lana Turner

Best Supporting Actor: Arthur Kennedy

Best Supporting Actor: Russ Tamblyn

Best Supporting Actress: Hope Lange

Best Supporting Actress: Diane Varsi

Best Screenplay based on Material from Another Medium: 

John Michael Hayes

Best Cinematography: William C. Mellor

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Release Date: December 12, 1957

Running Time: 157 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Diane Varsi, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn and Terry Moore

Directed By: Mark Robson