Peyton Place
Peyton Place is a 1956 novel by American author Grace Metalious. The novel describes how three women are forced to come to terms with their identity, both as women and as sexual beings, in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town, with recurring themes of hypocrisy, social inequities and class privilege in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on The New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks.
The novel spawned a franchise that would run through four decades. 20th Century-Fox adapted it as a movie in 1957, and Metalious wrote a follow-up novel that was published in 1959, titled Return to Peyton Place, which was filmed in 1961 using the same title. The original 1956 novel was adapted again in 1964, in what became a wildly successful prime time television series for 20th Century Fox Television that ran until 1969, and the term “Peyton Place” – an allusion to any small town or group that holds scandalous secrets – entered into the American lexicon.[2]
A daytime soap opera titled Return to Peyton Place ran from 1972 to 1974, and the franchise was rounded out with two made-for-television movies: Murder in Peyton Place and Peyton Place: The Next Generation.
The story starts in 1937 and continues through the years following World War II. While never mentioned explicitly by name, the novel does make several references that suggest Peyton Place is located within the state of New Hampshire: Vermont can be seen from across the Connecticut River;[3]:189, 191 Lake Winnipesaukee is a short drive from the town;[3]:146 a nearby New England town is called White River[3]:189, 197 a character is spoken of as attending the New Hampton School for Boys;[3]:196 and several mentions are made of a lake called Silver Lake,[3]:199, 200 of which there are four located in New England, three in the state of New Hampshire, in the cities of Harrisville, Hollis and Madison.
The fictional Peyton Place also appears to be a composite of several real New Hampshire towns: Metalious’ hometown of Gilmanton, as well as Gilford, Laconia, Manchester and Plymouth, where at least some of the work was written at the Plymouth Inn on Main Street (the inn has been torn down).[citation needed]
Grace Metalious and her husband George first considered Potter Place (the name of a real community near Andover, New Hampshire). Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found Payton (the name of a real town in Texas). They combined that with Place and changed the “a” to an “e”. Thus, Peyton Place was created, prompting her comment, “Wonderful—that’s it, George. Peyton Place. Peyton Place, New Hampshire. Peyton Place, New England. Peyton Place, USA. Truly a composite of all small towns where ugliness rears its head, and where the people try to hide all the skeletons in their closets.”[4]
