Peyton Place - 1957
Cats: Set Your Recorders, Drama, Tawdry|
I love this movie. I watched it constantly in the store. Actually this is one of my favorite movies with “Place” in the title. It is up there with Summer Place, Place in the Sun and In A Lonely Place. It is incredibly tawdry. In fact it falls into the catergorey “dictionary tawdry”.
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The under rated and under used Diane Varsi won her Best Actress Oscar for her performance stars as Allison MacKenzie, the daughter of single mother (and upstanding citizen of this slice of small town Americana) Lana Turner. The film focuses on Allison and her friends as their lives and their world starts to change, permanently and forever.
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The film starts as the great depression ends and World War Two is about to happen. These kids are growing up and the world starts to simmer, then boil over forever altering the innocence of this small town, a place that could have been one of a million small towns.
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This film touches on everything from the danger of under paying educators to the perils of teen sex to the horrors of teenagers standing up to their parents to the dangers of gossip and innuendo. It also not so lightly touches on sexual abuse, abortion and suicide.
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The movie is full of great performances. Lloyd Nolan is always perfect as the voice of reason mixed with old fashion values. Leon Ames as the leading business man of the community finds a few levels in a role that would have been entirely flat in the hands of a less capable actor. Russ Tamblyn got a Best Supporting Oscar nod for his work. Arthur Kennedy, one of my favorite actors of all time got a supporting actor oscar nod as well for his turn as the drunken, lecherous Lucas Cross. Betty Field, as Nellie Cross, the very much beaten down wife of Lucas and Mother to Selena (Hope Lange) and cleaning woman to Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner), gives a performance as beautiful and heartbreaking as her performance as the tragic Cassandra Towers in the 1942 Kings Row. Nellie Cross sure knows how to put a damper on a July fouth celebration.
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As Selena Cross, we are given a great performance by the beautiful and again under used Hope Lange. In a role that almost went to Barbara Eden, Selena is a victim in every sense of the word in this picture. She has, as the character’s last name suggests, a cross to bear. Through this character issues were touched upon so bluntly for a film from 1957, issues that still cause some anger and causes some people to violently protest.
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Lana Turner gives one her as usual great performances. Constance MacKenzie is a sexually repressed woman with a past. Her secret and her desire to keep it from her daughter ultimatly drives them apart. And as always Miss Turner is absolutely gorgeous.
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Will Allison and Constance reconcile? Will Selena ever find happiness?
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Tune in and find out. Turner Classic Movies. Sunday October 19th at 3:00PM
