The story takes place in the late 1930s and begins as the High School's new principal, Michael Rossi (Lee Philips),arrives in town to assume his duties...

Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner) is an attractive widow who owns a dress shop... She runs it efficiently but is an over-protective mother who removes all choices from her teenager daughter, Allison (Diane Varsi),including her selection of friends… Allison seems a strong candidate for rebellion once the opportunity arises…

Allison's best friend is Selena Cross (Hope Lange),who lives in a shack on the wrong side of town with her mother, Constance's housekeeper Betty Field, and her drunk stepfather, Lucas (Arthur Kennedy).

There is also Russ Tamblyn, "stuck" in a failure cycle emotionally, and socially; Barry Coy, the wild son of the town's richest businessman; Terry Moore, the high school flirt; David Nelson, the boyfriend of Selena Cross; and Doc Swain (Lloyd Nolan),the voice of logic... These are the most distinguished characters among a great collection of townspeople whose lives form a model of misunderstanding, scandal, and nasty secrets…

Mark Robson's drama draws nine Oscar nominations...

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.

The Granddaddy of all soap operas, Peyton Place has its place in film and television history. When the steamy best seller by Grace Metalious and film by Jerry Wald and 20th Century Fox were converted into a television series, it set a standard for evening prime time soap operas that some will argue has never been equaled.

Times have surely changed. Set in New England as it is if Peyton Place existed it's now in the vanguard of blue state America. But in 1941 Peyton Place in New England would probably have enjoyed keeping cool with native son Calvin Coolidge and no doubt voted for Hoover, Landon, and Wilkie instead of that radical FDR in the White House.

In this prim and proper New England town it's all about keeping up appearances. Everybody knows everyone so if things aren't quite fitting the America of Norman Rockwell you keep them behind closed doors.

Like Lana Turner never bothering to tell daughter Diane Varsi that she's an out of wedlock child, like poor Russ Tamblyn not being able to relate to the opposite sex in his teen years, like Hope Lange living with a brutal rampaging father in Arthur Kennedy who physically abuses her mother Betty Field and does more than that with her.

Leon Ames as the town's employer, owner of the mill where most of the town works maybe the leading citizen, but the town's moral authority is Lloyd Nolan, a very wise and caring doctor, the kind of small town doctor who's a passing memory.

It's impossible to describe the plot of Peyton Place because there are so many strands in the plot fabric. It all works very well courtesy of screenwriter John Michael Hayes and director Mark Robson. The whole thing is narrated by Diane Varsi as Allison McKenzie who grew up and wrote a book about her home town.

Peyton Place got nine Oscar nominations, but unfortunately lost a lot of awards it was up for to The Bridge On The River Kwai. Lana Turner's one and only nomination came in a year that the Academy voters gave the Best Actress Award to relative newcomer Joanne Woodward. Russ Tamblyn and Arthur Kennedy split the vote and Red Buttons won for Sayonara for Best Supporting Actor and the same thing happened with the Best Supporting Actress with Diane Varsi and Hope Lange splitting for Miyoshi Umeki to win for Sayonara as well.

The Code was still firmly in place and had it not been I think Russ Tamblyn's character would have been more explicitly gay. Here he's a timid young man not comfortable with the opposite sex and not real popular among his own heterosexist males. Then as now, gays are not real comfortable in most small towns.

Still for those who like their big screen soap operas, you'll love Peyton Place, even with changing mores the film holds up well.