Return to Peyton Place (1961)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Absolutely Fantastic

A Masterpiece!

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It certainly isn't the old fuddy duddys of Peyton Place, the Vermont town where scandal is still rocking them years after a young girl killed the stepfather who raped her. Like Miss Gulch of "The Wizard of Oz", society seems to be run by the domineering Mrs. Carter (Mary Astor), a vindictive widow who not only despises her son Ted's (Brett Halsey) new wife (Luciana Paluzzi) but uses Selena Cross (Tuesday Weld), the subject of that scandal to try and drive a quick wedge between them all the while going out of her way to prevent a reunion between the girl from the wrong side of the tracks and her spoiled son. Sitting back and watching is Constance McKenzie Rossi (Eleanor Parker) whose daughter Allison (Carol Lynley) has gone off to New York to prepare to have her book published. Influenced by the publisher (Jeff Chandler) to re-write and add more truth to the fictionalized tale of what happened years ago, Allison creates a new scandal and eventually her step-father, principal Mike Rossi (Robert Sterling) is fired for adding the book to the school library and balking at the board's demands that it be removed.The veteran Mary Astor dominates the film with her strong performance as the nasty Roberta, a woman so hard that she has no qualms about destroying her own son rather than see him happy with a woman other than herself. This is an ironic role for Astor who in real life had her own share of scandals which she wrote about in a scandalous diary. The role of Constance has been turned into a supporting one for the veteran Parker (who has recently passed away as of this writing) and is not nearly as flashy as what Lana Turner played in the original. She has one scene with Lynley that is practically identical to one between Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth in "Mildred Pierce". Director Jose Ferrer may not physically appear but his voice is very apparent as one of the minor characters.A beautiful song by Rosemary Clooney brings out the lushness of the landscape (set between Thanksgiving and Christmas) and appropriately sets up the melodrama. There's one truly strange scene which is never resolved between Selena and the ski instructor (Gunnar Hellström) where Selena all of a sudden flashes back to the rape and reacts as strongly as if she had been taken back in time. The movie is far from perfect, and while equally as much of a guilty pleasure as the original, it is missing the strong story detail of the original. A fascinating visual of Allison arriving in New York by train is followed by a detailed view of a New York publishing house that leads to many telling facts of that industry that may seem laughable now that there are too few publishing houses for every ambitious writer, and far too few actual books being released.

I was pleasantly surprised that RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE wasn't as bad as I'd remembered it to be - it's a well-mounted film, again produced by Jerry Wald (who produced, among other classics, MILDRED PIERCE), but neither as glossy-slick nor as compelling as its predecessor. It suffers from the same fate most sequels do, no matter how well-done or well-intended: the magic that sparked the original is simply gone and cannot be recaptured.RETURN, of course, is a thinly-veiled account of some of what happened to author Grace Metalious after PEYTON PLACE became the publishing phenomenon of the 1950s (no indeed, the townsfolk were not too fond of their "Pandora in Blue Jeans," as she was called, and, if memory serves, did indeed fire her schoolteacher husband). But it's kind of inconceivable that Metalious's novel would have been published at all if she'd been the snotty bitch portrayed by Carol Lynley - no publisher would have put up with such an attitude from an unknown, first-time novelist.CLEOPATRA's budget was straining the coffers at Fox, so the cast is not as big as PEYTON PLACE, nor, with three exceptions, as notable. Three Hollywood veterans - Eleanor Parker, Mary Astor, and Jeff Chandler, show the young folks how it's done, and Astor, selfish and manipulative as were two other characters she played (Brigid O'Shaughnessy in THE MALTESE FALCON, and Sandra Kovack in THE GREAT LIE, for which she won an Oscar) simply walks off with the film. We don't like Roberta Carter, or the censorship she tries to impose, but we understand her resistance to change, to losing the values and things she holds dear (including her son). And, unfortunately, Astor/Carter's advisory to the people of Peyton Place that they will live to regret their willingness to encourage such changes in morals as Allison's book seems to exemplify, was a sad prediction of the painful price we would pay in the 1980s for the sexual freedom of the 1960s.

Holy cow! Gotta wonder why every single member of the original "Peyton Place" declined to appear in the sequel...where is Hope Lange, Dianne Varsi, David Nelson, and especially Lana Turner? Word was they all got fat heads from the success of this film and producer Jerry Wald would not offer enough money to entice most of the cast back...especially Lana Turner..word was Turner was "available" for the sequel at a very high price and Wald said "no go"..... Anyhow what kind of time frame was the sequel? The original Peyton Place was set during world war II, Ted Carter was inducted remember? Return to Peyton Place it is suddenly 1961....what? Watch closely when Allison is running down the street at the beginning of the film and you will see a 1959 chevy impala parked......twenty years later!!! Looks like Allison didn't age too much! Movie seems to be divided into two parts: Allison McKenzie and her story of Peyton Place and the selling of her book and part two, hell hath no fury like a disenchanted mother played to the hilt by Mary Astor who tries to ruin the lives of anyone who gets in her way, especially Selena Cross (Tuesday Weld) and her daughter in law, played by Luciana Paluzzi (a few years before being a Bond girl). Talk about the mother from hell....if you saw "A Summer Place" remember the mother from hell in that one with Constance Ford? Mary Astor is her equal in this film. Seems like the entire town of Peyton Place in the sequel is fixated on keeping Astor out of their hair......Eleanor Parker is the new Constance McKenzie and does not have the acting power of Lana Turner as the original McKenzie mom. She tries hard to overact ala Turner in the original but it just does not work. Tuesday Weld as Selena handles her role a bit better but just does not connect as well as Dianne Varsi....a tidbit about Weld, she was also filming "Wild in the country" with Elvis at the same time Return to Peyton Place was being filmed...story had it that she just commuted from sound stage to sound stage on a daily basis to make both films at the same time. As soon as filming for the day was done on Wild in the Country she hurried over to the Peyton Place set. Anyhow this film isn't too bad...just gotta love the execution squad of Astor and the local townspeople who threaten to fire Mike Rossi for placing Allison's book in the school library. A love twist develops between Selena (Weld) and a Swedish ski instructor (Gunnar Helstrom) who prods Selena to tell her story about being raped. Allison (Carol Lynley) falls in love with a married book publisher (Jeff chandler) as the movie bounces back and forth between the goings on in the town and Allison's love tryst with Chandler in New York. Mary Astor, as the mother from hell and the Polly Harrington of the town pretty much steals the film. By the end you will detest the sight of her. Ending leaves a little bit to be desired....a town meeting that ends with Astor being more bitter and everyone else trying to explain their personal beliefs. Allison decides not to keep her romance with Chandler at the end of the film and return to peyton place (no pun intended!). Not bad for a sequel, but the original is much better.

1. You get to see Robert Crane of Hogan's Heroes in an "Ed McMahon" type role to somebody else doing a "Johnny Carson". Actually he's acting more like Jack Paar.2. The first 45 minutes of the movie take place on what seems to be two days before thanksgiving. Then on thanksgiving morning, they show a scene of New York at dawn - and the streets are totally deserted!!!!3. You get to see this 1960 era turkey as a prop and boy, were turkeys skinny back before corporate farming took over.4. Everything was so wholesome back then. Except when a woman (the Italian actress) has an unwanted pregnancy. Then she tries to lose it by having a skiing accident because abortions were illegal back then, silly.5. I've been to Camden, Maine, several times, and the locals told me that they shot none of this movie up there (they filmed the original peyton place there in 1956).6. Peyton Place was set in 1941-43; this movie never sets a year but if you figure by the fact that the young lawyer just got through law school and that takes 7 years from the start of college, and he was in the war until 1945, that would make this about 1952 I guess. Or maybe its supposed to be current with the release date and be 1961; they never explain this.7. There is nothing said about several of the characters of the earlier movie that had prominent roles (such as the town doctor and Allison's boyfriend). Why are two such good looking girls still unmarried during that era anyway? Obvious plot loopholes.8. This movie has an old fashioned look and feel to it even for 1960-61 standards. Within 3-4 years clothing, hairstyles, speech, and mannerisms were significantly different. It's like a time capsule movie of a small town America just before all the crappy changes that took place in the 1960s.9. It has a really good ending. I found myself actually siding with the old biddy who is singlehandedly trying to enforce the old Puritan moral code of her era against the will of apparently the entire rest of the town, who want to change with the times and let everybody do their own thing. She walks out of the town hall meeting in silence and totally defeated; terrific symbolism, and almost supernaturally prophetic in what actually happened across the country over the rest of the decade. 10. Last but not least, the man who plays the character "Dexter" (he has about 1 line; he is a school board member who is a weak character and the old biddy uses him as a supporter)...this guy was on a lot of the old three stooges shorts. He always played a bad guy, and I've never seen him on any other serious movie.