EricMontreal22

Connie's romance with Rossi was dropped, due to ethic standards? Umm--which exactly? They disapproved of middle aged love triangles? I did feel that story was dropped ridiculously fast, and Rossi suddenly having unsympathetic speeches to Connie didn't help.

What's so frustrating---and I know Shout shares our frustration, is what the freak else is Fox doing with these episodes? It's not a situation where they have lucrative sales elsewhere... They aired them on the Romance network but have they even repeated them elsewhere? Saynotoyoursoap--without seeming desperate, what can I do to convince you to encode an episode of Return as your next youtube upload?

Two Time Magazine articles. (Spoilers in each) The first has interesting points about the writing team. Television: Triple Jeopardy Friday, Aug. 20, 1965 Any other TV producer would think his ship had come in if one of his inge nues were piped aboard Frank Sinatra's good ship Southern Breeze. But Paul Monash, executive producer of ABC's Peyton Place, needed Mia Farrow's cruise like a hole in the hull. For one thing, Peyton Place had all the voyeur interest it needed on-screen without any help from off-screen publicity. For another, even before all the headlines from Cape Cod, Peyton Place's ratings were about as high as they could go. "Realistic Escapism." When Peyton Place was first announced for the 1964-65 season, the industry wondered if ABC programming had been taken over by some kind of nut. The network was not only gambling on soap opera in prime time but also doubling the stakes with another innovation—running the untested show two nights a week. But the network reasoned that 1) audiences could be hooked as easily in the evening as in the afternoon by the serial format, and 2) that the U.S., newly caught up in the "romantic escapism" of Ian Fleming, might be similarly ripe for the "realistic escapism" of Grace Metalious. Realism, of course, turned out to be a euphemism for a concentration of sexual adventurism such as no network had ever risked before. In its first season, Peyton Place was so successful that in June the network added a third weekly show, making the schedule Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 9:30 p.m. (E.D.T.). Ever since, even the laggard in the entry was never out of the Top 15, and at one point, the whole trio was bunched into the first five. The trick is if you see one, you have to see them all—all of the series' half dozen crises are mentioned and in tensified in every episode. Though the first Peyton Place was to have the same protagonists and proclivities as Metalious' peeping tome, Producer Monash insisted that the tone would be different. The novel, he says, was "a negativistic attack. Ours is a love affair with the town. The general feeling we have is of people evolving toward the light." But after 102 episodes, there has been little perceptible evolution. Last week's three chapters, for instance, interwove the multiple subplots without even a glimmer of psychic peace or a fleeting, joyous guffaw. Dr. Vincent Markham, back home after winning "international renown as the Albert Schweitzer of the Andes," was, it turned out, on the brink of divorce because he could not relate to women, and on the road to suicide because of sibling rivalry with a twin brother. The town's most dynamic executive, David Schuster, was feeling trapped at the office and in a sick second marriage that was turning his lovely, congenitally deaf daughter into a willful mute. And even the last nice teen-age girl in town, Allison MacKenzie (Mia Farrow), was at 18 facing Life: Schuster, she learned, was interested in her for more than her baby-sitting services. "Basically Moral." But Monash sees "nothing offensive" in such plotting. "Why don't our critics," he asks, "count up what happens in the three hours King Lear is on the stage?" Not that ABC is really counting (except its audiences). Its prime defense, enunciated repeatedly by Programming Director Adrian Samish, is that "the show is basically very clean and moral, because wrongdoers are punished." For instance, when the richest boy in town gets the daughter of his father's secretary pregnant, he is compelled to marry her. But then the girl herself breaks the code. She has an accidental mis carriage before the wedding but does not tell him and she gets her punishment—the marriage is annulled. Keeping solemn tab on the retributions, not to mention the whole 32-character plot line, is the responsibility of Peyton Place's "story board." The board, consisting of three senior writers, and aided by a constantly updated chart presentation that probably has no counterpart outside the Pentagon's "war room," lays out each episode. Five junior writers then turn their scenarios into finished scripts. None of the eight writers is over 35; only two earn less than $1,000 a week. Expensive Trappings. But they have to work to stay in that bracket. The cameras grind away on the back lot at 20th Century-Fox in Hollywood filming three half-hour episodes a week—more than the average movie crew shoots in a month. Thus the production is less polished than a feature film and sometimes barely distinguishable from the commercials Nevertheless, should ratings and sponsorship warrant, the staff stands ready for what could be "the next step" —four segments a week. All shows are filmed, and the stockpile is kept at 30. Thus, to cover Mia Farrow's absence at sea last week, Allison had an auto accident and fell into a coma, anxiously watched over by Mom (Dorothy Malone) and Dr. Michael Rossi (Ed Nelson). But because of the backlog, viewers will not see this momentous catastrophe until mid-November. And before Mia embarked, Peyton Place directors forehandedly shot advance footage of her in a comatose state and found a lie-in double who could almost fool Frank. Meantime, Peyton Place's 50 million frequenters have enough else to agonize over. Like whether Allison's father will take over the Clarion, and with it, the collateral duty of "the conscience of Peyton Place." Or if Dr. Markham can save his marriage, not to mention his life. Or if that other subcharacter, Rita Jacks, really is, as she fears, "no good. Joe kissed me, and when he kissed me —for a second, for a minute—I didn't want to stop . . ." Which, ABC trusts, is the way the viewers will continue to feel about Peyton Place. And from the end of a Dec 1968 article: "The new programs will fit into scheduling holes opened up by the imminent demise of several series, most of which are less than a year old and never caught on. NBC is dropping The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. CBS is losing Daktari and Blondie. ABC is dumping The Don Rickles Show, The Ugliest Girl in Town, Journey to the Unknown, The Felony Squad and Operation: Entertainment. The network is also jettisoning The Dick Cavett Show (TIME, March 22), one of TV's most literate daytime programs, which rarely ranked higher than 35th among the 35 daytime shows included in the ratings. But the biggest casualty is likely to be Peyton Place, originally seen on ABC twice a week and at one point increased to three times a week. The five-year-old show has tumbled to the bottom third of the Nielsen rankings of prime-time programs. Next month, it will be cut back to one episode weekly, and by next fall, unless the ratings improve dramatically, it will go off the air for good. The problem is how to find a happy—or even any—ending for all the tangled people and plots of Peyton Place. Executive Producer Paul Monash admits that it will be impossible to "tie up all the story threads. The solution has been proposed to have the Miles family [Negroes, newly arrived] burn down the town." |

Found this in a Time magazine article Television: The Boom Tube's Prime Time from Monday, Sep. 20, 1976 that predicted the hits of the upcoming season. Anyway thought this little bit might be of interest here: "In the biggest departure from old formats and formulas, the networks are turning to expensively produced dramatic serials and adaptations of bestselling novels; the emphasis is on high drama and convoluted story lines that lather on from week to week. This strongly resembles what soap opera has been doing for decades. Some of the soaps' Homeric techniques have already sudsed off on the evening shows, partly through the smash spoof opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman! The runaway hit Rich Man, Poor Man was last year's most influential show. It used heartthrob, class envy, suicide, seduction, desolation and disease with all the abandon of Days of Our Lives. Along with ABC's four-hour Eleanor and Franklin, it jolted the networks into restructuring the traditional grid of episodic family and doctor dramas. RM. PM, a $6 million mini-series based on Irwin Shaw's novel, picks up the plot this season as a full-fledged ABC serial called RM, PM Book II. Other new dramatic serials, notably CBS's Executive Suite, which uses a corporate shelter for exploring the lives of dozens of people and their families employed by one company, also borrow the daytime shows' mode of interweaving multiple plots. Notes Bud Grant, CBS programming chief: "The serial is the most powerful form invented for television. Once you hook an audience, it stays hooked." The biggest investor in long-form dynasty drama is NBC, with its Thursday evening Best Sellers series. Its opener, starring Henry Fonda, will be a nine-hour serialization of Taylor Caldwell's The Captains and the Kings, the saga of a Kennedy-esque Irish immigrant clan's rise to power. Other entries are based on Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle and Thornton Wilder's The Eighth Day. Some of these shows will surely provide fresh entertainment, but most of the season's prime time will be devoted to crashingly familiar formulas."

It does seem like they musta brought it up--unless ABC did the special, and told them not to....

Schemering's entry on it is hysterical--one of the creators was Richard de Roy who we just mentioned in the Peyton Place thread--he wrote for PP and wrot ethe entire dismal Murder in PP TV movie. I admit it musta seemed like genius to get Harold Robbins to create a TV serial. Imdb has this odd factoid: The Survivors was the first mini-series on network television - created as a finite set of episodes that told the tale beginning to end, instead of being created as an open-ended series.

It was ignored for TNG right? I found this listing for a tv special on imdb: Peyton Place Revisited (1973) (TV) hosted by Peter Lawford with nearly all the actors returning to talk about the show. I wonder if it might ever pop up somewhere (would make a great DVD bonus) Couldn't resist, hey? yeah she seems like such a shoe in pick for one of those 80s primetime soaps. Of course a lot of early colour stuff was done exactly like that0--they used every excuse they could to show as many colours as possible. Can't wait.

It really seems like the thought to do a serial in an hour format was just utterly alien lol

Thanks PR! the title screams flop spin off like Girl From UNCLE lol It coulda been maybe an idea to do something like that for the Summer and put PP on hiatus, since the production schedule--particularly 3 eps a week seems to have eventually killed it. (In one of the Paley Center seminars Agnes Nixon of all people talks about that with peyton, how much more time it took cuz it was shot on film, etc)

Yes I've already encountered this with the people connected to the pharmay--I dunno how they do that so well, on most soaps when they do have a new character who has meant to have lived in town for a while already (which they rarely do anymore--need everyone be newcomers?) it always seems weird--you never get the sense they actually were in, say, Pine Valley for all that time. You're right that that's the British model (of Monash was inspired by Coronation Street maybe this is an example) I am SOO effing excited to see Ruth and David Canary way back when, on this show. A number of other characters too. Yeha when I get the DVDs I admit it may be hard not to check out the tv movies, or even a random episode in a later season. It does make sense that in the 80s they'd wanto revive it even if the setup of most of the primetime soaps of the era were every different. Murder in Peyton Place was written by Richard DeRoy who wrote many fo the tv episodes (at least the early seasons) so it's too bad it's so trashy--I hear TNG was a marked improvement, and ignored much of Murder. Right, of course in some ways when you can't be soaphic it raises the intensity anyway--as you say it makes the emotional aspect more graphic. I'm looking forward to the switch into colour--the show is so engrained into my brain as a black and white show, I can't quite picture it (I've seen the credits in colour online) Yeah I found that strange too, although maybe it was wise to, after using the setup, just go on their own path (which is kinda what Alan Ball has done with True Blood--to think of a very different adaptation although he does use elements of later characters and stories in his later plots) Period soaps--on primetime and daytime seem near impossible to sustain (Mad Men excepted). But yeah, so would I.

That does make sense--I even wonder if some of her New York storyline was meant to lead into that... The Ferros are listed on about a 1/4 (maybe a few more) of the episodes, but they're not listed as story or script editors or consultants in the main credits--just for that episode's script. The Survivors is apparently kinda infamous for being such a collasal flop/disaster.

Hrmm Schemering mentions Parkins being very upset with it in 69 so maybe it was.

According to Schemering, it was to air when the show was canceled. When Ryan O'Neil disagreed to join as well it was canceled.

Minor spoiler for episodes 30-40 It would be around eps 30-40, Jan-Feb 1965 (the first few discs of box set 2) I loved Betty's New York storyline (she meets a "party girl", Sharon Purcell played by Dayna Ceder who i loved, at work there who she moves in with) and felt it coulda lasted more than 6 episodes. Julie Andersen, Les' disaproving sister who is in love with Dr Rossi and who was married to the doctor whose practice Rossi took over when he died, is leaving on a world toru (I expect her to come back soon in the episodes I'm watching--I really liked her when her character became a bit more knowing). Rossie arrived in ep 1 though

He hasn't been listed in the credits so far--by ep 46.

This has very very slight spoilers, next to nothing specifically about story. It's from the Museum of Broadcasting interview with Del Reisman. He's been involved in a TON of major tv and was hired early on with Peyton to be story editor/consultant I believe. Starts at 17:15 And the beginning of this has him mention working on the bible for Return To Peyton Place

Thanks for the reply I'm actually surprised there aren't more on here who seem to watch it--especially with the commercial release. ShoutFactory (to my honest surprise) have actually said it's been one of their top sellers out of their pre 1980s titles. I guess to most people on here it would have less name recognition and instant appeal compared to Dallas, Dynasty, etc... Like I said, it's much more like a daytime soap, even how it's structured--those primetime soaps usually have each episode end with a huge cliffhangar--Peyton Place ishappy to have each episode just be a series of scenes, often with no real episodic structure... I'll promise to stay away from spoilers--I'm on about episode 45 or so... I was going to read the entry on the show in Schemering's Soap Encyclopedia but then realized I didn't want to know any spoilers... It's hard though. robert J Shaw has a crazy primetime resume (including, oddly Our Private World, and Dallas--not Falcon Crest, as well as some early 80s General Hospital)--like in the 50s and 60s he wrote nearly any show that mattered. The writing team of Theordore and Mathilde Fero who script many of the best early episodes did lotsa famous sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver and were a very early, shortlived writing team on General Hospital pre Peyton Place. Paul Monash, who developed the story and refused to call it a soap (LOL) calling it instead a television novel (he was instigated to create it when he saw the success of Coronation Street in the UK) has an awesome resume as well (going as far as helping with the 80s version of V). I LOVE Betty (and Barbara Parkins) as well. She's so... well layered. Entitled but also sympathetic--I won't get into her more cuz of spoilers, btu she's prob my fave. That said, I honestly like all of the characters, even the lecturing Matthew Swain! I'm surprised you don't know any of the actors--particularly Ryan O'Neil and Mia Farrow (never saw Rosemary's Baby?) Both grew up to look quite different I think though when Allison talks I always think of Mia's voicework on the Last Unicorn, lol. She only took on the show expecting it not to be a hit apparently, which is why the much older Frank Sinatra who she was dating, finally broke her out of her contract. I lvoe when Betty and Allison have their discussions and you get that Betty doesn't actually blame or hate Allison. Great scenes. However if you ever are looking for a quintessential soap opera movie--many say the impetus for Dallas, please rent Sirk's Written on the Wind, from 1956 I believe. Douglas Sirks' 50s melodramas are essential soap viewing--through his inspired directing he raised the "women's picture" in all its contrivances into an artform (the four to watch are his first hit, the really ridiculous Magnificent Obsession, the much better All That Heaven Allows which was the inspiration for Far from Heaven and of course both of those stared Jane Wyman, Written on the Wind his most controverisally sexual film, and then the most over the top Imitation of Life). But Malone is just amazingly awesome as the sexually forthright, near villainess in Written--which i think she won an Oscar for. It's a long ways from Constance McKenzie (I love her fake endlessly fluttering eyelashes!) And I love George and the actor whose name escapes me--he does a dynamite, near schizophrenic job. It's just so compelling--and yeah he's not just some abusive monster, through the writing and the acting you really get why he is as he is. It's an example of how layered the show is. Well when I watch a big batch of episodes I watch the titles for the first episode, and then skip the rest usually watching the closing titles for the episode I've finally resigned myself into accepting will be it for the night

I think you're right. I just thought the original (swinging adults included) leaked pilot had so much potential--by the nd of thehort run I didn't care who the murderer was, etc....

That's wonderful, my library has On Writing but I haven't read it since I was a teenager--I'll have to pick it up again. I have to admit I love Kay Alden's story--getting in as an enthusiastic fan and doing so well, etc. Where the Heart Is seems to have shared a bit with later cult faves like early Santa Barbara--not taking itself too seriously and maybe as well, having a bit of a perverse or shocking sense of humour and story. I always find it interesting that Roy Winsor never seemed to actually *write* for his shows much or for very long... (And I wonder what really happened between him and Agnes Nixon--she didn't seem impressed when she discussed why she only wrote the first twelve or thirteen weeks of Search for Tomnorrow in her Museum of Broadcasting interview LOL)

I also think it might be interesting, for those of us who've read the book or seen the earlier movies, to discuss the changes made to the basic setup of characters for the soap aspect (this is where Irna, helped out apparently--I'd love to see the original pre-Irna rejected pilot). I haven't read the book since jr high (I never read the sequel) and haven't seen either movie in a while either, but I think I actually prefer the show as a soap opera... Some basic changes were due to tv censorship (just like they manage to, magnificantly well, make it clear that Betty early on has had sex with Rodney without even remotely saying it!), but others like making Rossi the doctor and not newspaper man helped shape the soap--as doctor he could actively interact with characters much better, for example. That said, while they still have the wealthy Peytons/Harringtons and the much poorer other characters, they all but eliminated the important aspect of the original with the very poor characters on the "wrong side of the tracks" (literally).

I admit, I was never big into GH, and I was so mad that my loved The City had been canceled (for the first half of 1997 I honestly thought it was the best of the ABC soaps I watched), that I never gave PC much of a chance. I remember watching the premier movie and, over the top-ness aside, liking it overall and then watching a few eps, but that was it. Then I tried to get into the telenovelas but never invested enough time or found them appealing enough (and I'm not opposed to supernatural on soaps, in fact I kinda dig it but nothing about what I saw of vampires running amuck seemed interesting). A few questions though--Debbi Morgan's character was shortlived and then recast, so I assume she left the show. Anyone know why? (I know around that time her name was briefly on the rise again, due to her tremendous role in Eve's Bayou, etc) Also, does anyone have a rough list of headwriters and EPs with dates? The wikipedia entry for the show is one of the worse for ANY soap in terms of that kinda basic information I so get off on

I know we have a Return to Peyton Place thread that, due to lack of any Return episodes, has become equally a PP thread, but I thought Peyton deserved its own thread, especially since now I know there are at least three of us currently watching it (you others are missing out ). But Chris B and anyone else, feel free to copy and paste any of your dicussion from there to here. I've always been intrigued by this show, and intended to get the *ahem* less than legal DVDs some have been selling of it, but never did. Then with some of my Xmas money I took the plunge and got both sets from Shout Factor--the first 65 episodes in general (which I think is Sep 1964 to May or so 1965, I wish they'd date the episodes). Besides dating the episodes, and a complete lack of special features, they did a great job with the DVD sets (some of the episodes are in very rough state, with a few having unclear sound which is my only complaint, and a a couple in the first box set are the syndicated versions which cut about 2 and a bit mins--all that remains apparently, but most of it looks and sounds wonderful). Anyway, within about three episodes I knew I was hooked. I'm already on disc 3 of box 2 and, since Shout Factory says they're having some trouble obtainign the rights to future episodes, I bit the bullet and ordered a set of (apparently) every single episode (over 500) plus both tv movies (and the unrelated two theatrical movies which I had seen many times already) from one of those aforementioned sellers--as I know by the time they arrive I'll be desperate for more. What I love so much about the show-- Well honestly I wasn't expecting something of such high quality. Having seen the one episode of the primetime "rival" created, the ATWT spin off Our Private World which looked just as cheap as any mid 60s daytime soap, I expected something that would look like a 60s soap but shot on film. I know with 2 and later 3 episodes a week for a year, it obviously had to be rushed, yet the actual directing is often really great, even a few spectacularly shot moments that remind me of classic 1950s melodramas by Douglas Sirk (fitting I guess since the only thing I knew, and loved, Dorothy Malone from before this, was his great oil soap opera Written on the Wind where she plays essentially the Betty Andersen character). The actual scriptwriting is equally great--so far there seems to be about 4 different writers or writing teams they cycle through, fairly big names in tv at the time like Robert J Shaw, and I was surprised at the literary quality of much of the scripts. Really good stuff. Finally the acting is basically the best you could hope for in a show like this--from the great older movie stars like Malone (she seems to have started the obligato Prime Time soap trend of having a just slightly past her prime female movie star headline the show), to the future stars like, of course, a note perfect Mia Farrow, Ryan O'Neil (knowing him now it's hard to think of him as the teen hrthrob back then) and a delicious Barbara Parkins. Ed Nelson, as Dr Rossi who is used to introduce us to the town and its citizens, may be the most typically "soap opera" of the major actors (by that I mean what the industry would deride as a soap actor) but he's certainly adequate for his role, is totally handsome and dreamy in a 1960s tv kind of way, and I think quite endearing as someone for the audiences to identify with (which is no small feat as he's had some rather bizarre and off putting speeches and character moods especially when ti comes to Connie--dated "me, man, you, woman" type stuff). The other thing I love about it is how it really is in many ways a true daytime soap opera except speeded up and amped up (production wise--with location shots, etc) for primetime. In other words, while I love the Dallas and later primetime soaps, this feels like a bridge between them and daytime shows--the pace is still relatively slow, with story points carried through more with dialogue scenes then any action sequences, everything's lower key. It's great to see--I know Irna Phillips helped with the writing but I believe she just helped shape the book to work as a serial--she was out by the first episode. Similarly, so far anyway (I think this changes as the show gets a bit more over the top in later years with falling ratings--but I haven't read spoilers), the characters reflect more the older daytime soap traditions. There are no real out and out bad guys the way primetime soaps (and modern daytime ones) usually had--you usually get to see everything from everyone's perspective so even when someone does someting awful, as Agnes Nixon liked to say about her creations, they did it for good reasons--you get why they did it. Anyway, I think it's essential viewing for any classic soap fan. I knew I'd find it fascinating, but honestly I didn't expect to get so completely *hooked* on it, I thought I'd appreciate it more solely for historical value. It really really holds up (even if I already have a few probs with some of its inconsistant writing--one of the writers in his Museum of Broadcast youtube clip admits they never had a bible for the show, something ABC desperately wanted and there have been a few, minor but still there, instances I feel already of characterization changing a bit to motivate plot. As well, because the stories are so good at overlapping each other I do feel that some of the big moments of payoff haven't been as ssatisfying or, well, BIG as I might like.). All said, it's wonderful. And I'd like to discuss it I think we're all at different places in our viewing, which makes plot discussion harder than with the currently airing soaps--Chris, I know you're past episode 200 and into the colour ones, and I'm not sure where you are, YRBB, with your viewing, but I think beind me. I admit I'm still trying to more or less avoid spoilers, so any serious discussion of plot should, I think have spoiler warnings. (My one complaint is, if you skip the credits and previews like I do, each episode is just a bit over 20 mins and I tend to watch it late at night with the intention of just one or two episodes before bed--that always becomes at least three episodes, as watching one more 20 min segment seems so easy--and some nights has meant watching 10 or more... )

But LIAMST did have very strong ratings for a while there -- so did LOL during the Labines period (i think). WTHI had about 4 major writing changes in its short time didn't it? (but man I wanna see that show).

I'm shocked you liked Hidden Palms--even by the "final" episodes?

Hidden Palms had potential but it fell apart by the second or third episode I think (I saw the pre air pilot which had that adult swinger subplot I was sad it was cut lol)