If you’ve heard of Grace Metalious chances are excellent it is for one thing-her bestselling 1956 novel Peyton Place, a book about a little New England village that under the surface is hiding secrets. Drunks locking themselves in the basement with all the booze, single mother pretending to be a widow, so the town doesn’t know she had a love child with a married man when she left Peyton Place for the Big City. A lush young beauty from the wrong side of the tracks being attacked (and impregnated) by her stepfather. Abortion. Murder.
Now just what kind of person could write such…filth? Because when Peyton Place was published moral guardians decried it as trash and pornography. And who was the author? This Grace Metalious?
Grace Metalious, whom my spell check insists is Grace Malicious, was a housewife and a mother of three. Like her contemporary Shirley Jackson, writing not housework was her driving force. Who needs to wash a sink full of dishes and comb your child’s hair when the muse is burning? And like Shirley Jackson, neither women ever earned her distant mother’s approval. And like Shirley Jackson, Grace Metalious died much too young.
Thumbnail Biography
Born Marie Grace DeRepentigny on, September 8, 1924.
Grace’s parents separated when she was a child. The young Grace would escape to a beloved aunt’s home and lose herself in writing and fantasies about a better life.
Married George Metalious in 1943 and never stops writing even when she becomes a mother.
In 1954 starts a novel about a small town and it’s secrets under the working title The Tree and the Blossom . The novel retitled Peyton Place, is published in 1956 and becomes a runaway (and controversial) bestseller which spawns movies, television shows and sequels over the years.
The backlash to Peyton Place is vicious and George Metalious loses his job as principal in tiny Gilmanton, New Hampshire.
Known as “Pandora in Blue Jeans” thanks to an iconic photo of Grace in said blue jeans at a typewriter, several more books are written but none, not even Return to Peyton Place, reaches the dizzying heights of her first novel’s success.
With fame comes turbulence and Grace Metalious dies on February 25, 1964 from cirrhosis of the liver and leaving heavy debts.
Books
Peyton Place (1956)
Return to Peyton Place (1959)
The Tight White Collar (1961)
No Adam In Eden (1963)
Biography and Literary Criticism
The Girl From “Peyton Place” by George Metalious (1965)
Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious by Emily Toth (1981)
Looking for Peyton Place by Barbara Delinksy (2005)
Unbuttoning America: A Biography of “Peyton Place” by Ardis Cameron (2015)
Online
Vanity Fair article
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2006/03/peytonplace200603
People magazine article
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20080327,00.html
Salon article
http://www.salon.com/1999/04/15/peyton/
Obituary
Film and Television
Peyton Place (1957)
Big budget movie starring Lana Turner as Constance. The film received nine Oscar nominations.
Return to Peyton Place (1961)
Sequel to the 1957 hit movie. Eleanor Parker replaces Lana Turner as Constance.
Peyton Place (1964-1969)
Prime-time soap opera based on Peyton Place. The very young Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal star as Allison and Rodney.
Return to Peyton Place (1972-1974)
Spinoff daytime soap opera.
whiskeytangowendymarie.com 