♪ Those grown old.

Have had the youth blood from them by the jagged edged winds of winter.

Know, sorrowfully, that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard eyed cynicism.

But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming.

And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful.

Their tired winter eyes turn heavenward to seek the first traces of a fault, softening.

One year in early October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton Place like a laughing, lovely woman.

Indian Summer came and spread herself over the countryside and made everything hurtfully beautiful to the eye.

♪ First thing we knew as an AP dispatch.

And in regard to the fact that a woman in New Hampshire had written a book that had, was going to set the place on its ears, and it did that when the publisher decided to send somebody to Gilmanton for a publicity, they sent, Hal Boyle up here he was writing for the New York Daily News and Hal Boyle called the Tobacco Road of the northeast of, you know, and, of course, Gilmanton is a pretty fine town.

And it is today, right in the middle of the smug Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, world of the 1950s a housewife up in New Hampshire wrote a novel a novel about illegitimacy, incest and rape, sex, abortion and murder, a novel that showed New England small towns to be filled with hypocrisy and lies and awful people.

It was the most sensational book of the decade, went on to become the largest selling novel in history up to that time.

10 million copies in all.

It became a successful movie and later the most watched television program of its day.

The book was Peyton Place.

It made a lot of money for its author.

It made her famous.

It also ruined her life.

The author was Grace Metalious.

♪ The town of Gilmanton New Hampshire is where Grace Metalious wrote Peyton Place.

To this day, many in the town have not forgiven her for the novel.

A lot of people think that Gilmanton was the model for the book, but if you've read Peyton Place, you know that it bears very little resemblance to Gilmanton Peyton Place is a factory town, Gilmanton is not.

Peyton Place has a large town library.

Gilmanton does not.

And in fact, almost all of Peyton Place has nothing whatever to do with the town of Gilmanton save for one fact.

And that fact is the central story of the book, the story of Selena Cross, how she murdered her stepfather and buried his body in the sheep pen.

The story is based on fact.

It actually happened in Gilmanton Iron Works in 1947.

♪ I was just carried away with everything that I saw and heard here in Gilmanton And I got my toe in on the Barbara Roberts, murder mystery there.

And, it was just beyond me that something like that could go on.

And I was beside myself with my brain buzzing, and she got that, and she wrote it up almost exactly the way I told it to her.

There was this, rape of a young girl and, incest in town, and she wrote about it, and they, the town felt that she went too far.

They all mentioned the fact that the Roberts case was a part of the Gilmanton history, because they don't want people to know that they don't want they don’t want people to know that you know, they all have their skeletons, which is what Grace wrote about skeletons.

Right?

Now, you may wonder, as much of the world did back in the 1950s, just who was Grace Metalious in Gilmanton New Hampshire?

What kind of a woman was it that would write, or for that matter, that could write a book like Peyton Place?

Well, first of all, Grace, Metalious was not Greek.

Metalious, in fact, was her married name.

She was born Marie Grace DeRepentigny to Franco-American parents in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1924, and from the start she was a bundle of contradictions.

She was, in the truest sense ingenuous, naive and sophisticated.

At the same time.

She trusted everyone and always trusted that tomorrow would be a better time.

From her earliest days growing up in Manchester, she wrote stories and plays and poems, and the endings would always be the same handsome prince would appear at the end and all would be right.

And for all its sortedness Peyton Place has a happy ending.

Mother is married, Salena is acquitted, and in the last sentence of the book, the protagonist, Allison Mackenzie, rushes home to meet the young man waiting for her.

The irony is that Grace's own father deserted the family when she was 12, as had her grandfather's.

It was a difficult family.

I think it was a torn apart family.

Both of Grace's, grandparents, both sets of grandparents had been divorced or left, you know, abandoned whatever by the two husbands and, which was something that French Catholics just didn't do in those days.

It existed, but it wasn't prevalent.

And then, as I said, Grace's father left, the mother in, 1936.

So she came from a broken home at a time when most French Catholics didn't come from broken homes.

High school sweethearts, high school sweetheart.

It's discovered some pictures of her, about that time somewhere when she's in her late teens.

She's gorgeous.

A lovely girl.

♪ George Metalious and Grace DeRepentigny were married right out of high school.

Within 18 months, the couple had a daughter, Marsha, and George had joined the Army Medical Corps and was shipping out for Europe.

After the war, Grace and George had another child, whom they nicknamed Mike, and then under the GI Bill, George became a student at the University of New Hampshire.

The couple lived in married student housing at UNH and earlier they lived at Wentworth Acres housing over in Portsmouth.

Grace was not a very good housekeeper, which she was writing all the time.

She wrote four short stories while while she was living at the Acres One of them was the Norman Page.

But, out of one was right.

The one was, the David Strong bit, the piano player who in a book killed himself but in actuality did not.

One was about, the cat lover.

What was her name?

Harriet, or, whatever I forgot her name now.

And, the other one was about, a large mill that dominated the town.

So, as you can see, many of the stories used in Peyton Place were, in fact, written years before the book ever came out.

Soon, another child, Cindy, was born.

Grace had great difficulty with childbirth, and after Cindy, she would have no more.

♪ By now George was teaching school, first in Manchester and then Belmont and later Gilmanton he also taught at the Laconia State School, the Metalious’s were living in near poverty in a camp like house on Gilmanton.

They called the place it'll do.

Rent was $25 a month.

It was a hard life, hard on a marriage.

Certainly.

She was kind of dejected and down on us often, we were having a few personal problems and so pedaling back from Laconia State School one day, I decided that maybe we'd better try to do something.

I couldn't figure out what it was, get back home, and suggested that maybe she would like to write a book with.

She jumped at that.

She thought that was an excellent idea.

So I went to bed and she went to bed at 2:00 in the morning she woke me up and says, I've got it.

And she outlined the whole of Peyton Place.

From 2:00 until 6:00.

And four pots of coffee, she outlined Peyton Place.

All right, and started to write it.

And in nine months, the thing was finished.

So that was her fourth baby.

Of course, she couldn't have any more.

You see, that was her fourth.

Peyton Place found a publisher very quickly.

The firm of Julian Messner in New York City.

Messner’s widow, Kitty, headed the firm, and she liked the book, but she insisted on one change.

You see, Grace had written the sheep pen murder story in Peyton Place, just as it had occurred in Gilmanton in 1947.

A girl murders her own father in revenge for incest.

Well, Kitty didn't like this, and she insisted that the character be made the girl's stepfather instead of her natural father.

They took it out, and when they took that out, they made it a stepfather and Grace was heartbroken.

She really was, she said.

Now my book, it was a tragedy.

Now it's nothing but a dirty book.

The town knew that she had written this book because it was common knowledge, and started to gather information as to what it was about, which upset the town.

In the meantime, that particular year, I was teaching in Gilmanton I was a teaching principal, and before I started teaching, there was a lot of controversy about whether or not they would let me teach there, because this book was written and coming out, and the main opposition was from one of the school board members.

Her name was Bessie something or other and.

Anyway, I did teach that year because they could very well get out of the contract unless they want to pay me.

I wish they didn't want to do it.

They didn't get the service.

So I taught that year.

Next year in the spring, my contract was not renewed and I knew it was not going to be renewed and so did everybody else.

And, so I went and got another job.

It was a press agent stream.

A young teaching principal in a small New England town is fired because his wife has written a scandalous novel about the town.

You can imagine the newspapers had a field day nationwide.

The result were huge pre-publication sales, and the money started rolling in.

We had gone down and the book was to come out in print, and she had gotten Jacques Chambrun as her agent, and he did do well by her for that.

And she told me she came by she said, he's going to get me a lot of money, more than Margaret Mitchell got for Gone With the Wind.

Can you believe it?

I said, well, we'll see about a week later.

She came by 3:00 in the afternoon.

Look at this.

It was a check for $250, and she was beside herself and I'll tell you, my eyes sprang out a couple of feet also.

So we laughed and we talked, and we laughed and we talked.

And she says I'm going to go.

And I have to go home, she said.

And I'm going to go see if I should get my milk and bread.

Her husband was teaching at the Corner School, and he earned 3000 and some hundred dollars a month, I mean, a year, a year.

And they had three children, and they lived in a little shack down on Loon Pond Road, which had been built by an old woman less than $30 a week.

Unbelievable.

Yeah.

Anyhow, she went down to this store and she called me up after she got home.

She said, well, I guess I made a sensation there today.

I said, what did you do?

She said, I went in and there was Fred and there were some of the old duffers that hang around there.

And I said, Fred, I'm heading for home.

Can you stake me to some bread and milk?

She said, I need it very much.

He said, well, can you pay me a little bit on your bill, Grace It's getting kind of big.

There's no chance you would want to pay for this bread.

Milk?

Well, she said, yes, I will, Fred, if you could cash a check for me, I got a little paycheck here.

Oh, he said, I'll be glad to Grace.

Let me see it.

And she passed him the check for $250.

Needless to say, she got her bread and milk!

♪ It was a little farm house.

Public covers lived there for a long time, and she saw the ad in the Citizen, and it was being advertised for $5,000, completely furnished.

Well, we went down and we looked at the house and she fell madly in love with it.

And I have to confess that we did Jimmy a window, and we went in and we went all through it.

Oh, she loved it so much.

We used to go down and picnic on the stoop there, and she was a nervous wreck that somebody was gonna buy it.

She said.

That's all they're asking, $5,000.

Well, she didn't have anything like that.

She didn't even have $5 to wave around, you know.

But that is where she was when she bought that house and moved into it.

I asked her sort of what the book was about, and she said, well, it was a story of small town life, and that it was written from the points of view of several different people.

Well, when I read it, I didn't really think that that was so.

But then she said that she, the book of the Month Club was interested in it and had been in touch with her, but they wanted her to change some things and leave out some things.

And I said, are you going to do it?

And she said, no, I'm not.

And I said, well, good for you.

You know, stick to your guns.

They didn't take it.

Of course, they wound up not taking it and I'm sure they were sorry.

In the end, she was going to sign a contract with 20th Century Fox.

And, they haul this contract out and say, here, sign it.

I said to Grace.

I said, well, maybe you want to read it before you sign grace and the Agent immediately says, oh, there's no need for that it’s just a standard contract.

And the, representatives of market oh said, no, there's no need for it I says I'll take it to the other room to read anyway.

And they were appalled by that fact.

Of course, I did read it.

And there were a couple of things in there, though not to our advantage.

When I pointed them out, she said, well, George, these people know better.

And she signed it well as a result that cost her all the television service.

You see all the rights to the TV series, no doubt.

You know the old saying, be careful what you wish for, for your dreams just might come true.

Grace Metalious’s dreams had come true.

She had power and money and fame.

But life suddenly got complicated and people wanted things.

Another bestseller to sell movie rights, money, interviews and Grace didn't know what to do.

She started drinking, she put on weight, and her marriage began to fall apart.

Where was the prince on the white horse?

Now, TJ Martin wasn't on horseback, but he was a jockey.

A disc jockey at WLNH in Laconia.

Grace called up the radio station one day as she wanted to have a tape recording made, and so he invited her to come up and they made a tape and one thing led to another.

And first thing you know, they were very much in a twosome and it wasn't any secret at all.

Although she was still technical he played records for her over the air.

He talked to her over the air.

Didn't directly, but she knew what was, what he was saying, what he was doing.

My Funny Valentine was their favorite, I think.

But later on, he did that again with another lady after he who also worked at the radio station after he was unmarried, from Grace.

♪ The marriage was, of course, breaking up.

George left, and T.J. Martin moved in and took over Grace's life.

T.J. and Grace and the kids drove out to Hollywood.

Here's Grace with Dan Daley, David Wayne, and here she is with Cary Grant.

♪ I met Lana Turner and my sister Marsha met Elvis Presley.

I got to meet Elvis, and I got to meet Pat Boone.

Oh, yeah.

The movie Peyton Place opened in New York.

Good reviews and great audiences.

It was a hit.

The money was flowing in.

TJ had the old farmhouse refurbished into an estate, and there were parties and more parties.

Grace was living at the Plaza in New York City a good deal at the time.

She was also drinking heavily.

Early in 1958, George and Grace were divorced.

Two days later, Grace married T.J. the marriage lasted two years.

Meanwhile, Grace was having great difficulty staying sober and not incidentally, writing.

She fought that typewriter as though it was a poisonous spider, and to get herself upstairs, she had to get those books done Return to Peyton Place came easily.

That was just a pot Boiler.

And then, I think the tight white collar came next.

Return to Peyton Place had to, in fact, be finished by a ghostwriter.

Life was in a spiral.

Everyone, it seems, wanted something from Grace.

Not a few were outright stealing from her.

Her own mother suing her Her own mother sued her yeah.

Oh my God.

Sued her for $10,000 on a motor vehicle accident that, occurred as they were coming back from dinner one night.

The loss of what was a conjugal rights or conjugal rights that the way conjugal rights for there was a slight accident in which she was involved Was she sensually impaired or so Yeah.

Well, that's what it is.

It's your husband can’t take you to bed, right?

That's the loss of conjugal rights.

Anyways, her mother sues her for $100,000 so that her sister took from her all her friends did.

Yeah.

T.J. Martin stormed out of the house in Gilmanton after a quarrel in early 1960, the marriage was over.

♪ And George Metalious came back.

He and Grace had a reconciliation and remarried.

It looked like domestic bliss.

Life magazine even did a spread on the family.

♪ The movie Return to Peyton Place, was given its national premiere in Laconia.

The community turned out in formal attire to honor Grace Metalious at a grand banquet.

Success had conquered.

She was now forgiven.

Well, at least in Laconia.

Oh, yes, we had a big deal.

It was played at the cinema and there was a big dinner ahead of time at the tavern, I think, because at that time the tavern had a wonderful restaurant and bar and all that stuff, and we all went.

And for dessert, of course, they had cherries jubilee that came in blazing away.

It was great.

And then we all went to the movies.

It’s colonial and it was a wonderful evening.

There was a very funny time, though, when Return to Peyton Place opened in New York, and they sent five people from Gilmanton down.

They were the most hilarious group of yokels you ever saw in your life.

I could name them all off to you.

And they went down and stayed at the Roxy and went to Return to Peyton Place and got wined and dined and taxied around.

They never got over it.

They never got over it.

After the Return to Peyton Place, the popularity of Grace Metalious fell off.

She was to write only two more books, The Tight White Collar and No Adam in Eden, which is a story about growing up in Manchester.

The critics hated the latest books.

Today, however, no Adam and Eden is considered by many to be Grace's finest book, and perhaps the best profile of the city of Manchester ever written.

But Alcohol and time were taking their course.

She and George invested in a motel near Winnisquam Lake.

The motel failed and then the marriage failed and George went off.

It was a Friday.

In February 1964, Grace was shopping in Boston with her latest friend, one John Rees, an English journalist.

She said she felt ill.

The couple went back to their room at the Parker House Saturday she was no better.

On Sunday, she was transported to Beth Israel Hospital.

She was hemorrhaging the hospital.

She asked for a lawyer and changed her will, leaving her entire estate to Rees.

And then on Tuesday, February 25th, at 10:30 in the morning, Grace Metalious died.

She was 39 years old.

♪ John Rees by the way, did not accept his designation as beneficiary of Grace's estate.

And in the end, Grace's children were all re inherited.

But frankly, there was no estate.

All of it was gone.

Lawyers and publishers and agents and boyfriends and Grace herself had spent it all.

Basically died broke I mean she owed the government money and she owed other things.

Other people money, other bills.

So yeah, basically she died broke.

I didn't get anything.

My sisters didn't get anything.

And she died.

Yeah.

Broke.

Unfortunately.

And Grace finally came home to the only place she ever called home.

To Gilmanton it was really a tragic life.

A very tragic life.

And she had, she had high hopes and high enthusiasm and that, as you said, she was romantic.

Her hopes were dashed many times, and many people were unnecessarily cruel to her.

And she was only 39 when she died that year.

And just the bubbles broke.

The bubbles burst.

And at the end there wasn't really anything left.

And I miss her.

And and I think there are a lot of things I would probably say to her now that I wouldn't have said then, and I'm sorry, I can't do that.

What would you say?

Oh, you know that I love her.

You do you forgive her for what?

♪