Famous Writers:
Pandora In Blue Jeans
Grace Metalious lived in poverty and squalor much of her life, but managed to write a bestseller, Peyton Place. Born Marie Grace de Repentigny in 1924 in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire, a French-Canadian ghetto, her parents divorced when she was ten. The youngster escaped from reality by writing tales of adventure and romance. Probably the last thing anyone expected of her was success as a writer, or success at any endeavor. Given to embellishment, she sometimes said her name was Grace Marie Antoinette Jeanne D’arc de Repentigny. Her pregnancy and marriage at age 18 to George Metalious changed her name, but not her standard of living and should have squelched even further any dream of being a published writer. 
But at age 30, with three children and living in a shack she called “It’ll Do,” writing was her lifeline while George served in World War II, and when he came home and attended the University of New Hampshire getting a teaching degree under the GI Bill. After moving to Gilmanton, New Hampshire, one of George’s teaching positions, Metalious soaked up local lore, which included the sordid details about a young girl who murdered her father in self-defense after years of incest. Grace, instead of playing bridge and golf with the other faculty wives, hunkered over her typewriter hammering out a novel she called The Tree And The Blossom. She often locked the door, leaving her children to fend for themselves or run to the neighbor’s for food and shelter. In 1956, an editor saw promise in the manuscript and renamed it Peyton Place.
A hundred years earlier, Abraham Lincoln reportedly called Harriet Beecher Stowe “The little woman who started the Civil War.” Now, a woman dubbed “Pandora in blue jeans” had opened the box on the juicy secrets of a small New England town not unlike the one in which she lived. She had even given one character the same name as a local man, which had to be changed. Nothing was ever the same for Metalious and her family, or the publishing industry. Peyton Place became the second “blockbuster,” (following Gone With The Wind in 1936). In a time when novels sold about 3000 copies total, Peyton Place sold 100, 000 its first month.
Shunned by her community (outraged by the notoriety she’d sprung on them), reviled by the clergy, and dismissed by many critics as “trash,” Metalious’s salacious novel stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year. It became an international phenomenon, a bombshell movie that won awards, and the basis for a prime-time television serial that ran from 1964-1969. While some called the book saucy, compelling, and surprisingly literary, others called Metalious a dreadful writer and a purveyor of filth. She countered with, “If I’m a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste.” As to the frankness of her language, she stated, “Even Tom Sawyer had a girlfriend, and to talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass.”
Metelious received hate mail; women forbade their children to play with the Metalious kids, and Peyton Place was banned in some states. Still, the author flaunted the image of a rebellious housewife, and relished the gossip about her excesses (alcohol) and affairs (her’s and George’s). She did book signings dressed in flannel shirts and blue jeans cuffed to the shins, moccasins, no underwear (she claimed) no makeup, and her long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. It amused her to sell books to women who she knew would take their copy home and hide it, and the notion that thousands of “prim and proper” church-going folks were toting around copies and reading it in spare moments, and that teenagers were pilfering the book from every nook and cranny, perhaps their introduction to sexuality.
Eventually, Grace and George divorced; she remarried, divorced, remarried George, separated, and took a lover.
Her other novels faded quickly: Return To Peyton Place (1959), The Tight White Collar (1961) and No Adam in Eden (1963). Grace, too, did not last long; she died from cirrhosis of the liver at age 39. The author had once said, “If I had to do it over again, it would be easier to be poor. Before I was successful, I was as happy as anyone gets.”
Metalious is buried in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. In 2007, the city of Manchester, the Manchester Historic Association, and the University of New Hampshire finally honored its once-famous daughter with a celebration that included an examination of her life and famous book, readings of her work, and showings of the movie.
Today, a bio of Grace Metalious appears on a Web site called Scandalous Women. And Peyton Place is a common metaphor for the seamy side of life. During President Clinton’s impeachment hearings in 1998, Congressman Lindsey Graham wondered aloud about the relationship between the president and Monica Lewinsky. “Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?” he asked. Those of us of a certain age understood what he meant.
