PEYTON PLACE (1964)
The TV series starts at the same narrative point as the original movie, only in set in 1964 rather than the early 40s.
PEYTON PLACE doesn't seem to have the stiff artificiality of daytime soaps. In fact, it feels kind of movie-ish, with the younger actors especially giving off an earnest Actors' Studio vibe. Mia Farrow makes perfect sense as Alison Mackenzie: tremulous, dreamy, with just a hint of retardation, while Ryan O'Neal as Rodney Harrington is James Dean with puppy fat: a cool jock who seems perpetually on the verge of tears. Fun to see them both so young, especially bearing in mind the divergent paths their lives and careers later took: LOVE STORY v ROSEMARY'S BABY; Farrah Fawcett v Woody Allen; Tatum v Soon Yi; methaphetamine v UNICEF.
Just like DARK SHADOWS, the first episode begins with a newcomer travelling into town by train. Instead of Victoria Winters, it's Ed Nelson as Michael Rossi, now a doctor instead of the school principal he was in the movies. Either way, he's clearly A Man With A Past.
Sensitive Norman Page, Russ Tamblyn in the first movie, has been transformed into sensitive Norman Harrington, Rodney's younger brother with a secret crush on Alison.
Rodney's involved with semi-trashy Barbara Parkins, until he finds his father and her mother together - hugging!! So he dumps her in favour of a chaste romance with Alison. As Alison's mother Constance, Dorothy Malone is kind of Sue Ellen-ish: warmer than Lana Turner's version, ditzier than Eleanor Parker's. She runs a book store instead of dress shop (all the better for such dated customer enquiries as, "Has the new Agatha Christie come in?"). The second episode ends with her realisation of where she's seen Dr Rossi before: he was working in the same hospital the night she gave birth to Mia Farrow. She's terrified he might remember that she didn't have a husband with her - after all, it was only seventeen years ago!
Episodes 1-75
The same sort of configurations that show up on later prime time soaps can be seen in the early episodes of
PEYTON PLACE. For example, the business and romantic relationships that exist between the rich Harringtons and the middle class Andersons are similar to those between the Carringtons and the Blaisdels in early DYNASTY - if Krystle were married to Matthew instead of Blake, that is, and started seeing her boss behind his back.
The rich Harrington son (Rodney), sort of a three dimensional Jeff Colby, is dating (and more) the poor Anderson daughter (Betty), but drops her like a hot tamale when he finds his father and her mother together. He seeks salvation in the virginal Allison. This leads a desperate (not to mention pregnant) Betty to try and split them up by gatecrashing their first date and doing a sexy dance.
Interestingly, the original plan was to kill Betty off in a car crash six weeks into the series, but she proved such a hit with the viewers that she ended up sticking around till the final episode. However slutty she must have seemed in 1964, there's something earthy and relatable about the character, certainly in comparison to the ethereal (albeit likeable) Allison.
So Betty survives the car crash, but her unborn child does not. On the advice of her father, she neglects to inform Rodney, who reluctantly marries her believing her to still be pregnant. Thus Betty becomes the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who marries into a rich and hostile family - shades of Krystle in DYNASTY and Pam in DALLAS - but it's Maggie in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF whom she most resembles.
When the truth about her un-baby is revealed, Betty runs away to New York, and straight into a story-line that serves as dry run for Barbara Parkins' big screen role in VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. In both stories, she's a small town New England girl who comes to the Big Apple where her friendship with another girl exposes her to a world of booze and pills, fur coats and married men.
The characterisations on PP are remarkably rounded and non-judgmental. One of my favourite characters is Betty's father George, a drunken, mentally unstable wife beater whom we are invited to feel compassion towards. It's hard to imagine any soap opera today (certainly in Britain) depicting him as anything but a monster. Even the kept woman who (almost) leads Betty astray in New York is portrayed sympathetically, and the man who (almost) rapes her ends up taking pity on her instead.
Ed Nelson as Dr Rossi and Dorothy Malone as Constance Mackenzie comes closest to conventional romantic leads. Malone, with her glamorous blonde bouffant, is delightfully unconvincing as a humble, bookstore owning spinster. As for the fluttering eyelashes and breathy delivery--I swear to God, it's Linda Gray playing Krystle Carrington.
There seems to be a cast shake up every thirty episodes or so. The first departures are Leslie Harrington's enjoyably cynical sister Laura, who leaves on a one way trip to Europe, and his brittle, bitchy wife (imagine a bedridden Sable Colby) who becomes the series' first fatality. This leads directly into a story-line in which Leslie, in order to have a codicil to his wife's will overturned, tries to have her declared mentally incompetent. Any similarity to a certain DALLAS story-line is, presumably, coincidental.
Then we're introduced to Elliot Carson, played by Nick Toscanni's kindly hospital boss from DYNASTY Season 2. Here he's a very different, haunted sort of character who returns to
Peyton Place after serving an eighteen year jail sentence for murdering his wife. He also happens to be Allison Mackenzie's real daddy. Can he prove his innocence while protecting Allison from the discovery of her own illegitimacy? (Short answer: No.)
Another brilliantly dark character, Paul Hanley, shows up around the same time. He's Allison Mackenzie's new teacher with a touch of the Norman Bates about him, who has been travelling in Europe and therefore given to much existential philosophising. He's also the brother of Elliot Carson's murdered wife, and it was his childhood testimony that sent Elliot to prison all those years ago. Now Paul thinks his own father, a religious zealot who runs the local drugstore, may have manipulated him into falsely identifying Elliot as the murderer.
Fast forward another thirty episodes and Elliot Carson's just been shot by poor deluded George Anderson. He was aiming for Leslie Harrington at the time, having been goaded by Paul Hanley who believes Leslie to be his sister's true killer. And it's at this point that Constance Mackenzie chooses to tell Allison that not only is she illegitimate and that her real father is a convicted murderer, but he's also dying in hospital.
The scene in which Ryan O'Neal learns from his father that his
mother was the real murderer is unexpectedly brilliant.
Leslie Harrington is the nearest thing to an out and out villain on
PEYTON PLACE. A loving but ruthless family man, he bears more than a passing resemblance to early Blake Carrington, even down to the name. So it's a bit of a shock when, after about seventy episodes, he abruptly leaves town for pastures new without so much as a farewell scene. Even more surprising is who replaces him as boss of
Peyton Mill: one Jeremy Wendell.
Other DALLAS connections include Ed Nelson, who was the original Jeb Ames, and writer Robert J Shaw who penned three episodes of DALLAS in Season 3.
The whole thing's so wonderfully knotty, and the characters are so inter-connected, that a chance meeting between any two people is invariably fascinating. One of my favourite scenes so far is the one where Paul Hanley tells Betty Anderson that he's figured out where she fits in the "emotional geography" of
Peyton Place - "at the latitude of my sister [a murdered slut] and the longitude of Allison Mackenzie [the town virgin], a dangerous
place to be."
As far as production values go, it's streets ahead of DARK SHADOWS or any other US daytime soap I've seen. It's closest equivalent, I guess, would be the UK year-round soaps like CORONATION STREET - but in the 1960s, CORRIE's studio bound, "as live" recordings give it the feeling of a stage play caught on film, whereas
PEYTON PLACE feels more cinematic, combining something of the slick glamour of the original films with an edgy B-movie grittiness.
Something else it inherits from the PP films, which I've never seen in any other soap, is an acute awareness of the seasons. The show begins during a sultry Indian summer. Much mention is made of the summer that ended just before the series began which Rodney and Betty spent doing unspeakably erotic things to one another. Then abruptly, the show moves forward in time to winter, and it proceeds to snow solidly for at least three months. Then just as suddenly, we jump forward to spring, and the unexpected wedding day of Constance and Elliot. (I was surprised: I always figured she'd end up married to Michael Rossi like in the movies.)
Future Monkee Mickey Dolenz turns up in the role of the prophetically named Kitsch, a naughty delinquent who spikes Norman Harrington's (soft) drink and then ties him to the pillory in the town square. Norman is Ryan O'Neal's sad-eyed younger brother, a fragile hunk cast from the same mould as the original Steven in DYNASTY and Alec Baldwin in KNOTS LANDING.
There seems to be a shift around the Episode 70 mark. Darker characters like Leslie Harrington, George Anderson and Paul Hanley disappear to be replaced by characters with less of a connection to the town's past - Dr Morton's mysteriously too-good-to-be-true daughter and Jeremy Wendell's drag queeny wife and deaf daughter. It's starting to feel less like a "television novel" and more like a conventional soap opera. I wonder if its best days are already behind it?
