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.

hall895 Peyton Place is a perfect little New England town, quaint and idyllic, a wonderful place to raise a family. Or so it seems. In truth Peyton Place is full of secrets. Awful, horrifying secrets. Full of phonies and liars, people who act morally superior but who are in actuality total frauds. A pleasant facade hides moral hypocrisy and unimaginable evil. Peyton Place is not a pleasant place at all. And ultimately that makes for a rather unpleasant movie.The story unfolds in the early 1940s and the time is as important as the place. In this time and place your public image was more important than anything. You can't allow yourself to be publicly shamed, that would be a fate worse than death. Unfortunately in this town all it takes for a young girl, and by extension her stuck-up mother, to be shamed is for the girl to go swimming with a boy. If heaven forbid she should be seen kissing the boy? Scandal! This is the backdrop for this movie's story. Unsurprisingly the youngsters of the town rebel, each in their own ways, against the restrictive atmosphere. For all of them the sooner they get out of this town the better. In the meantime a bunch of nonsense happens. Nonsense which does not make for a particularly interesting or enjoyable movie. And then things take darker turns and the movie becomes nearly unwatchable.This is a soap opera. And not a good soap opera. Overly melodramatic yet incredibly boring. And the movie just drags on forever. At over two and a half hours the movie way overstays its welcome. It's pretty bad throughout but the last act is just painful to sit through. A nonsensical trial in which the defendant finds life in prison preferable to a public shaming. That's all people care about in this miserable town, what people think of them. Really, it is the town itself and its attitudes that are on trial. The facade is peeled back, revealing the truth about what a miserable place Peyton Place is. This however comes much too late to save the movie.The story in Peyton Place disappoints. The performances range from middling at best to terrible at worst. Lana Turner, playing the mother of one of those "scandalous" teens, is the nominal star of the movie. Unfortunately her character is so cold and miserable you want nothing to do with her. Meanwhile Lee Philips, playing a potential love interest for Turner's character, has all the personality of a doorknob. So that part of the story is a total dud. Some of the younger performers come off a little better but nobody is really able to rise above the material. The movie is dull and plodding. The phony moralizing from the totally phony characters wears thin very quickly. For most of its running time this is a laughably bad soap opera. And then at the end it tries to get deathly serious and fails at that too. Peyton Place is not a place you want to visit.

rbrankley This film deserves a prize for hypocrisy. Despite it's trumpeting of high minded values, a salacious sexual undercurrent is only too apparent. This is particularly apparent in the performance of Lee Philips as Michael Rossi, who arrives in the hick town for which the film is named and becomes school principal. His sexual obsession soon becomes apparent in his pursuit of Lana Turner, who plays a sedate, dress shop owning widow. He tells her that he plans to introduce a sex education program at the school (remember, this is set in 1940!) and, after inviting her to be a chaperon at the school graduation dance, envelopes her in a passionate embrace which she quite properly resists. Boring and morally unsavory tripe.

Dennis Lasanen This is one of my all time favorite movies. I like to repeat the ending lines as they still apply for the people of today:"We finally discovered that season of love.""It is only found in someone else's heart.""Right now someone you know is looking everywhere for it.""And it's in YOU!"I recently have visited the area where the movie was filmed in Maine and I am still in aw that the streets and shops are in the same condition now as when the film was made. Good Job - Twentieth Century Fox!