'Peyton Place' hits 50

The novel is still a sore subject in town at center of the steamy story

The borders of this colonial-era town suggest an A-frame house on the brink of toppling over. They form a squarish figure with a triangular extension that appears raised to the right and balanced on one corner, as if a mere push could send it tumbling down to Massachusetts.

For the most part, history has respected Gilmanton to the point of indifference. No wars have been fought here, no gold or oil discovered. There have been no major plagues or natural disasters. No president, movie star or Internet billionaire was born in Gilmanton or uses one of its lakefront residences as a summer home.

Only once, 50 years ago, did the house of Gilmanton receive a fatal shove, from a novel named "Peyton Place."

Grace Metalious' sensational story of sex, violence and other scandals in a small New England town, based in part on Gilmanton, made the author an international celebrity and a local pariah. It transformed an otherwise obscure township into a symbol of decadence and hypocrisy and rivaled Elvis Presley as a shocking breach to the official decorum of the 1950s.

Metalious is long dead, and many who knew her have also passed on, but "Peyton Place" remains the biggest news ever to hit Gilmanton. Thanks to the book's anniversary and to a planned movie starring Sandra Bullock as Metalious, a discussion few desire could well begin again.

"Most people just don't like to talk about it ('Peyton Place')," says 42-year-old Kimberly Warren, who works behind the counter at the Gilmanton Corner Store, a general store that serves as an informal gathering place. "It's just such a sore subject."

With some 3,500 people spread out over nearly 60 square miles, Gilmanton is a spare, quiet community of lakes and forests and cattle farms, of historic homes that proudly display the years they were built and roads as likely to be dirt as paved. Besides the Corner Store, the main "downtown" district consists of town hall, a church, a bed-and-breakfast and a library that's closed for much of the year.

On a recent afternoon in Gilmanton, Warren had just prepared a hearty roast beef sandwich for longtime resident Tom Smithers, 77 and a retired contractor. He remembers when the book came out and all the anger it caused. But did he ever read "Peyton Place"? Smithers, a laid-back, heavyset man wearing blue trousers and a checked hunting jacket, shakes his head.

"I didn't have to read it," he says with a smile. "I sat around and watched it."

Smithers recalls some of the gossip about Metalious, a housewife in her early 30s at the time "Peyton Place" came out -- her drinking, her love affairs, a rumor that she didn't even write the book. Such talk angers her friends, who don't claim she was a saint, but believe that a great spirit has been dishonored.

"She was one of the most intelligent, fascinating people I've ever known," says her friend, Jeannie Gallant. "Her problem was that she was naive and she put her trust in the wrong people."

Metalious was born Grace de Repentingny in 1924 in Manchester, N.H. She grew up poor but ambitious, so determined to be an author that she would sit in her aunt's bathtub, a washboard across her lap, and write story after story.

She was still a teenager when she married George Metalious, with whom she had three children and lived in and around Gilmanton, where he served as school principal. Stuck in a small house with no running water, dubbed "It'll Do" by the author, Metalious completed a novel based on what she had seen in Manchester, Gilmanton and other New England towns.

Based on a true story