New Hampshire celebrates "Peyton Place" 51 years later
jaimej78
Friday, May 11, 2007
Camden to mark filming of 'Peyton Place' in '57
By Tom Groening
CAMDEN - Sharon Teel remembers the filming of "Peyton Place" like it
was yesterday.
A star-struck 13-year-old girl in the late spring and early summer of
1957, she took the bus each day from her home in Rockland to Camden,
where most of the activity was. Many days, often depending on how she
was dressed, Teel was chosen as an extra to fill a scene.
If not, there was still fun to be had for herself and her friends.
"We'd just hang out and watch the shooting, hang out with the stars,"
she said Thursday.
"It was fun. That's all we talked about, we kids, that summer," Teel
remembered.
Teel is planning to be in Camden for events June 15-17 marking the
50th anniversary of the film, which had its world premier in town in
December 1957.
The events, which include receptions, a parade, a panel discussion,
and of course a screening of the film, are being sponsored by the
Camden-Rockport-Lincolnville Chamber of Commerce.
Expected to attend the celebration will be Christopher Murray, the son
of actors Hope Lange, who appeared in the film, and Donald Murray, who
stayed in the area. The younger Murray is also an actor, and has
appeared in films such as "The Pelican Brief" and "All The President's
Men" and TV shows such as "The West Wing" and "24."
Teel had an encounter with the infant Murray.
A relative of hers worked at the Thorndike Hotel in Rockland where
many of the actors stayed. After being tipped off to Hope Lange's room
number, Teel - hot on the trail of autographs that summer - knocked at
the door.
"A man answered, and I said, 'Oh, I must have the wrong room,'" Teel
said.
"He kind of laughed," she recalled, and told her he was Hope Lange's
husband. Murray was holding the 3-month-old baby Christopher.
"He handed me the baby," Teel said, and signed his autograph. She had
no idea he was an actor, but since then, "I've seen him in lots of
movies," she said.
The movie was drawn from the 1956 novel, written by Grace Metalious,
based - a little too closely, as it turned out - on life in Gilmanton,
N.H., where she lived. Metalious was spurned in her hometown, and was
the victim of vicious gossip. She died at 39 from liver disease.
The book sold 56,000 copies in its first 10 days, and in a little over
two years, it is estimated that one in every 26 Americans had read it.
The last statistic is most remarkable, considering that it was banned
in many libraries and bookstores. The novel dealt with sex, incest,
alcoholism, abuse, class bigotry, poverty and abortion. Too much, it
seems, for Hollywood, which neutered the book for the movie.
The film starred Lana Turner, Russ Tamblyn, Lloyd Nolan, Arthur
Kennedy and Lorne Greene. Tamblyn returned to Camden in 2000 for a
retrospective on the film.
This time, Marsha Metalious Duprey, daughter of the writer, is
expected to attend.
Also, Ardis Cameron, a writer and professor at the University of
Southern Maine who has written and spoken extensively about the novel,
will be on hand for the panel discussion.
Despite the bleak subject matter, the movie and the filming process -
which included scenes in Belfast at the former Crosby High School, and
in Rockland at the Knox County Courthouse and many scenes in Camden -
is recalled fondly by locals.
Teel and her husband will polish up their 1953 Chevrolet for the
parade of vintage cars.
"It was fun. I'm excited about it," she said.
When she watches the movie on DVD these days, "It's like revisiting my
childhood," Teel said.
"The Boston Globe"
May 8, 2007
Finally, a return to 'Peyton Place'
Vilified during life, author is celebrated 50 years after book's
publication
By Sarah Schweitzer
In the age of bobby socks and Eisenhower, upstanding citizens dared
not sing the praises of Grace Metalious. The New Hampshire native,
conventional wisdom held, had disgraced New England with the 1956
publication of her novel "Peyton Place" and its unbottled, unbuttoned
portrait of life in a small town.
"She was called a slut, to her face," recalled Jeanne Gallant, a
neighbor and friend of Metalious's in Gilmanton, N.H., where she lived
and based the book. "People threw rocks on her property. Rotten
tomatoes. People kept their children away from her children. You name
it, they did it."
The wild success of the book was little antidote to the attacks,
which, Gallant and others say, precipitated Metalious's descent into
drink and her death of cirrhosis of the liver at age 39 in a Boston
hospital.
So it is with some humility and delicacy that the City of Manchester,
her hometown; the Manchester Historic Association; and the University
of New Hampshire at Manchester this month are feting Metalious with an
in-depth examination of her life and the book, which sold millions of
copies, spawned a movie and television series, and is credited with
helping undo the Victorian-styled ways of the 1950 s.
The celebration -- which includes lectures, readings of her work, and
showings of the movie -- marks New Hampshire's first public embrace of
its native daughter. It comes a year after the 50th anniversary of the
book, a mistiming that city officials say was not deliberate. The
State of New Hampshire, meanwhile, decided to let the anniversary pass
unmarked, as did the Town of Gilmanton, where the only outward sign of
her years there is the headstone on her grave in the Smith Meeting
House Cemetery.
"There was some talk about marking the anniversary a year ago. But
nothing was ever done. Some people felt they would just as soon let it
go." said Donald Guarino, a Gilmanton selectman. "They said, 'Let it
rest; there's no need to revisit it.' "
The novel shocked readers across the nation with its tightly woven,
page-turner tale that included topics at once forbidden and familiar:
abortion, sexual awakening, drinking, ethnic hatred, religious
bigotry, and class division. The opening line gave hint of what was to
come: "Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but
fickle..."
The book roared to the top of the New York Times best-seller list and
remained there for 59 weeks.
Some nations banned it, including Canada. Reviewers bashed it.
Teenagers had to carry copies in brown paper bags and secretly flip to
dog-eared pages containing the raciest passages. In Beverly Farms,
Mass., a sign at the time in front of the library read: "This library
does not carry 'Peyton Place.' If you want it, go to Salem."
"Peyton Place" was particularly hard-hitting in New England, where
writers before had not explored the dark and Gothic in their
backyards, leaving that to their brethren in the South with books like
"Tobacco Road."
"People felt she had exposed a New England of dirty laundry, rather
than the tourist New England," said Ardis Cameron, a professor of
American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine,
who spearheaded the re publishing of the book in 1999.
Gilmanton residents chafed at what they claimed were character
likenesses to real people in town, most notably, a local girl who
confessed in 1947 to killing her father who had sexually abused her
since she was 13. Metalious, in fact, used the sordid tale as the
climax of the book and changed only one significant detail. At the
insistence of her editors, she made her character, Selena Cross, the
step daughter, rather than the daughter, of the abusive man.
Audiences, Metalious had been told, were not ready for incest on the
written page. The tweak did little to soften the verisimilitude in
residents' minds, and Gilmanton reacted with a vengeance.
"I heard children say to Cindy, 'I can't play with you because your
mother wrote a dirty book,' " said Gallant of Metalious's third child.
"It was Grace's dream to write a book that would be famous; it was her
ultimate goal and she did do that, but she didn't realize the price
would be so high."
Yet, to read "Peyton Place," it seems, Metalious might have been
forewarned.
"She's behaving like an ostrich by staying here, as if nothing had
happened," Metalious wrote of Selena Cross, after the girl is found
not guilty of murdering her stepfather.
"Right or wrong, it happened, and it was only a matter of time before
people would start to talk. All the fine friends who didn't want to
see her hang for murder are hanging her themselves with their vicious
talk."
Metalious was born in Manchester to working-class parents. At 17, she
married a Greek -American classmate, George Metalious, who became a
school teacher and principal; she had three children with him. But she
resisted the mold of New England country wife.
She spent her days by the typewriter, dressed in jeans, flannel shirt,
and pony tail and doing little housework. She called her house in
Gilmanton "It'll do" and was well-known around town for her off-color
language, bohemian friends, and penchant for town tales.
The success of her book when she was 33 came by storm. But her world
began to crumble almost immediately. Her marriage ended. She wrote
three more novels, but none neared her initial success. She burned
through her money and her drinking became a toxic addiction. She is
said to have told her British lover on her deathbed, "Be careful of
what you want; you may get it."
George Metalious, who lives in Rye, N.H., remains reluctant to talk
with the press, but, in a brief telephone interview, said he was
pleased to see her hometown honoring her legacy.
"It's about time," he said. "She was vilified, but she was a good
author and they didn't realize that till 50 years later."
He said Grace failed to receive credit for the role "Peyton Place"
played in loosening the social strictures of the 1950 s.
"There's much more to the feminist movement now.... She was
instrumental in that," he said.
Cameron, the American and New England studies professor, agreed,
noting that "Peyton Place" predated "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty
Friedan and wildly outsold it.
" 'Peyton Place' was read by a lot of ordinary people," she said. 'It
helped people talk about issues that they really couldn't talk about
before. They used the book as a way to confront issues, in justifying
this kind of conversation."
One of those was Angele Levesque, 78, who graduated from Central High
School in Manchester four years after Grace Metalious and read the
book far from her mother's watching eyes.
"We were kept in the dark. Everything was hush-hush; we were supposed
to be perfect in the public," she said. "Now it's all out in the open,
and that's a good thing."
Jaime