Ritorno a Peyton Place

Not as sensational as the great Metalious' novel based upon a small New England town with all it's small talk, and nasty inuendos, but it holds it's own with fine performances of Mary Astor, who really steals the show as the embittered mean old lady who spoils things for others. Cast includes Carol Lynley as Allison Mackenzie who writes her book; Jaff Chandler, as the publicist; Eleanor Parker as Connie; and Tuesday Weld as Selena Cross. I give it 6/10

As has already been stated, all of the actors in the original "Peyton Place" were replaced by new performers. That was the first mistake. The next was the script. Allison MacKenzie (Carol Lynley) has just completed a semi-autobiographical novel about her home town. Off she goes to New York for a meeting with her publisher Lewis Jackman (Jeff Chandler) and what looks like (at least at first) an antagonistic relationship between the two. Meanwhile, back in Peyton Place, Ted Carter (Brett Halsey) has just returned with his new(pregnant)Italian Bride, Raffaela (Luciana Paluzzi) and is greeted by his wealthy, influential mother, Roberta (Mary Astor) who is displeased, to say the least,by her son's choice of a wife, and immediately begins a campaign to destroy Ted's marriage and drive Raffaela away. Roberta even goes so far as to involve town outcast (and Ted's onetime girlfriend) Selina Cross (Tuesday Weld) in an attempt to make his wife jealous. In New York, Allison has discovered she likes her publisher and considers becoming involved with him. When the newly published book reaches Peyton Place, all Hell supposedly breaks loose. Allison's mother Constance (Eleanor Parker) who has a skeleton in her own closet, is disgusted by the book. Her high school principal husband Mike Rossi (Robert Sterling) however, promptly puts it in the school library. Whereupon Roberta Carter (naturally, the head of the school board) demands his resignation. And so it goes...

Most of the performances are problem number three. Lynley plays Allison so stiffly and unpleasantly that she quickly becomes a bore. Chandler is OK though he has little to work with. Parker overacts to a fault, which she often did in the past, and Sterling does about as well as Chandler. Weld is a bit shrill herself (especially when she begins an impromptu affair with new ski instructor Gunnar Hellstrom) but at least she's lively. The best scenes in the film are those between Astor (superb, as always), Halsey and Paluzzi (both of them are good and prove adequate sparring partners for Astor, though of course, they aren't in the same league) Had the film concentrated on the tension between these three, and a clearer exploration of it, then it would have been that much better. Instead, Director Jose Ferrer insists on switching back to the other ''Plot Threads'', none of them even as remotely interesting as this one. Especially Lynley's almost-affair with Chandler, which, like the rest of the film, goes nowhere. As for Ferrer, he appears to have left the performers to their own devices, and done little else. At least the obligatory town meeting, attended by all the principal characters, wraps up most of the loose ends neatly, which is certainly a novel ending for a soap opera., and the CinemaScope production is handsomely photographed. It really isn't necessary (or wise) to see the original "Peyton Place" before viewing this film, because "Return To Peyton Place" inevitably suffers in comparison. In all fairness, it must be mentioned that this film underwent extensive editing before it's release, excising scenes still glimpsed in the theatrical trailer. Astor's part suffered from the editing most (and her scenes are probably the only regrettable deletions), but the rest would only have made a mediocre melodrama that much longer.

The sequel to the fifties blockbuster ,it's much more modest in scope and in ambition and its ending is so predictable it does not equal the first episode.Constance McKenzie (Lana Turner is replaced by Eleanor Parker) is no longer the central character but one must say there is no more central character.There are about three plots which could be depicted as "the book Alison wrote" "Ted and his over possessive mom" and "Will Selena be an outcast for all her life?" .All these plots meet in the end as Alison's stepfather stands in great danger of being discharged ,cause he put his stepdaughter's more or less autobiographical "work" in his high school library.Lucianna Paluzzi ,who plays the unfortunate daughter-in-law ,is a future James Bond Girl ( one of the best villains ,Fiona Volpe, in "Thunderball")

"Peyton Place" fans might be interested but the others had better choose the 1957 original work .

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.

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.