Six Feet from Grace - The 50th Anniversary of Peyton Place

Life is ethereal. Death may be as well. Researchers find solace in pursuing the past and the lives that impacted the world - historical, political, scientific or artistic. Human nature is intriguing especially after noted individuals pass on. Writers feel obligated to explore, analyze, interpret and sometimes vilify those who can no longer defend themselves. The writer feels compelled to explore the inner sanctum of a movie star’s life or that of an actor or another writer. Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Hemingway come to mind. Secrets are exposed that may not have been discussed or pursued while the famed individual was with us in living color. Sometimes the noted celebrity is vilified not only while alive, but after their death.

Grace Metalious, the New Hampshire housewife, mother and author of four novels, one of which was Peyton Place, fell victim to verbal and written abuse during life and after. Her 1956 controversial novel impacted the literary world long after her 1964 death from alcoholism and chronic liver disease. She was 39-years-old and succumbed before her time in Boston at Beth Israel Hospital.

Peyton Place was originally titled: The Tree and the Blossom when it was shopped around to publishers (Yankee Magazine, 1990). It was Kitty Messner, Editor and President of Julian Messner, Incorporated that had a nose for contemporary fiction. She bought the book and her ad man suggested the name change to Peyton Place according to Yankee.

The year, 2006 commemorates the fiftieth year of her first published novel, yet I know of no Grace Metalious Literary Awards or other attributes reminiscent of her larger than life contributions to the literary world or to the feminist movement that became commonplace after her death. Metalious probably knew little of that movement anyway. She was an unwitting charter member by default, a contributor of sorts merely pounding the keys of a typewriter that was auctioned off with her home and other possessions after her death to pay debts. The typewriter, table and chair went for $75.00 – the three on which she wrote the novel. Criticized by dissidents of her works and deemed not smart enough to write a novel, she possessed an IQ of 151, it has been stated. That might refute the inclination to reject her credibility.

Grace Metalious (born Grace Marie [Antoinette] Jeanne D’Arc de Repentigny in Manchester, NH) or (Marie Grace de Repentigny on her birth certificate) was larger than life and was covered and coveted in newspapers, magazines and in the biographies of Dr. Emily Toth and one by her husband, George Metalious. Toth’s definitive study of Grace and three years of research is a comprehensive compilation of research that reads like a novel in its own right. Inside Peyton Place – The Life of Grace Metalious (Doubleday, New York, 1981) reveals a complete expose that is sympathetic to the unnatural life and stardom that Grace had to endure and accept after the first book was published. A biography by George Metalious and June O’Shea titled: The Girl from Peyton Place appeared in 1965 (Dell Publishing, New York) and was informative yet, to me incomplete. At 189 pages, it neglected much of Toth’s 374-page text of Grace’s life and the extensive bibliography and index that made the Toth biography so definitive. Obviously Toth was at an advantage by having the period of 1964- 1981 to delve into Metalious’s life with interviews and research that George may not have had access to or may not have desired to include during his married life with Grace.

The town of Gilmanton, New Hampshire often ostracized Metalious, drove her in part to depression and alienation, which eventually took its toll in her unanticipated and unnecessary, early demise. The locals fought to prevent her book from the Gilmanton library stacks and opposed her burial in the town where she composed her classics. She died with the knowledge that she possessed some close friends and acquaintances in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Some remain today, alive and cognizant of her contributions to literature. They speak fondly of her and avoid the salacious fodder that was bestowed upon her, her complex lifestyle and her writings. I have had a chance to speak with some of her acquaintances at length, though many are now elderly and their recollections fraught with memories that are less vivid than years ago. It is not their fault. Age has that effect now that we live longer. What was deemed dementia or “a spell” is now recognized by modern medicine as complex and descriptive central nervous system diseases that may exacerbate into Alzheimer’s disease and other failures of memory that might have been retrieved decades earlier, if the questions were asked then.

There is often a fascination with death and tombstones, cemeteries and plots of old. History is hidden in each grave, a history that can no longer be a source of reference or knowledge from an individual in death. What have we lost or what dissipates into thin air and the earth upon the cessation of breathing and a heartbeat? Gravestones, markers, granite plot posts guard the remains below the earth like frozen mineral sentries of dedicated authority, immovable, protective, definitive and indestructible with time. Oh, the stones may lose their inscription by the weathered forces of New England. Lichen and moss or fungi may encroach upon the porous stone often forming a synergistic, parasitic grasp of the minerals that were carved into square, rectangular, or oval icons of remembrance for posterity. After one hundred years or more, the wind, rain, snow and other unknown elements of the earth may plummet the smooth or rough surfaces, eroding the hand-chiseled names, dates of birth and death, family members interred or merely erase slowly and painfully for historians the memories of one’s presence on this fair earth. Grace Metalious’s stone is of that architecture. An elegant white but gray infused series of veins marbleize the base and top of the simple but beautiful lines of the marker.

It simply reads,

METALIOUS

Grace

1924-1964

It stands alone in the lower far right-hand section of the Smith Meeting House Cemetery, a plot of land that rises above Route 140 east from Gilmanton’s Four Corners. The elaborate and ornate gate of the cemetery contains metal filigree with the dates 1775 and 1911 bordering an arch of the words, S.M.H. CEMETERY. A stonewall of old borders the land with ancient and recent stones. There is artistic warmth to the narrow ornate gate entrance and header supported by four intricate posts that might otherwise support an old gas street lamp.

Sometimes alone in life, she remains alone in death. We visit her from time to time to place flowers at the base of the marker. The backside of the tombstone says nothing, since 1964. It lacks and needs the accolades that might read,

WIFE, MOTHER, and AUTHOR

Peyton Place, 1956

Return to Peyton Place, 1959

The Tight White Collar, 1960

No Adam in Eden, 1963

Of course, the white smooth back could include the above testimony to her accomplishments, or a simple passage from her first book –

“Autumn is the time for dying when the leaves fall off the trees and try to bury themselves in Nature’s covered ground.”

That was not to be however in 1964, yet the blank white and gray marbled facade yearns to be inscribed and embellished, even to this day. Why not now on the 50th anniversary? The stone also beckons for her date of birth, in full – September 8, 1924 and her date of death, February 25, 1964.

Periodically when we visit her, we see flowers left by friends and admirers of her life and work. On this cold December 31, 2005 visit by our family, we celebrated the last day of the 49th year and 364 days with her prior to the 50th anniversary year of her first novel, Peyton Place. Only one other set of footprints, older impressions it seemed, dotted the recent and frozen snow. On New Year’s Day, 2006, the anniversary would begin a half-century celebration of her thoughts and imagination in words. Our children, ages 10 and 9 years, placed a pine bow and two dried flowers from a nearby bush – a fragile cluster of muted, pale amber hydrangea.

The symbolism of that frigid day seemed windless near her grave, yet reflected and mimicked her sometimes cold and isolated life. Our departing footsteps squeaked in mourning as our soles pressed the crystalline formations left by the vehicle that had passed her by on a warmer day, leaving the troughs of its tire treads on an access road, frozen-solid and impassable.

Underground, it is a different world, of dark and cold, unchanged and unaltered since the dirt was thrown on the cement vault fortress that is one’s eternal home. For Grace, that occurred in 1964, enveloping her remains like a blanket of nature’s degradation and natural compost of the New Hampshire flora and fauna.

The physical remnants of a human life are captured in boxes of wood and cement, either whole or in the form of ashes and bone, in urns of ceramic, that seem leveled at six feet beneath the land that they once walked and beneath the air that they breathed when once a living entity. This City of Death and potential redemption is a universal geological layer of those who preceded our being. Some stones beckon for us to study them, trace them, seek out their history, a compulsion by the historians and curious that didn’t exist when the souls at rest were alive and breathing easy among us.

Why is there this desire and compulsion to know the dead, to trace their lives, which we will never understand, in part, because their friends, relatives and acquaintances are also dead, taking with them their own impressions of those friends - away in death, as well. Biographies written post mortem cannot possibly know about the individual. They can never capture the thoughts, movements, solitary transgressions and dreams that were once part of that human being. The written words appear as a mere few percentage points of a memory bank of one’s life, often in error or misperceived. It is the living author’s say as to what encompasses a biography, when to begin and when to end, often leaving out critical data that may not enhance the salability of the final manuscript. They may contain judgments, innuendos, false pretenses and clouded remembrances of a person’s true presence on earth.

Many autobiographies of celebrities have co-authors that make the boring more palatable and appealing to the potential purchaser and reader. This is seen best in those books written of sports figures, where the publisher cannot rely on the noted individual to write their own story in complete sentences and grammar.

It is frequently claimed that there are 1,500 biographies of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Can they all be true aspects of his life? Can they all differ in content and accuracy? Only he, Abe himself, would know what his actual life was like, what thoughts carried him from birth, through adolescence and adulthood and until his fatal demise in 1865.

Unfortunately, Grace Metalious did not live to write her life story. Because of her ability with the written word, it would surely have been a bestseller as well. Writing Peyton Place at age 32 and living only seven more years, what do we not know of her dreams and ambitions beyond poverty or mediocrity as a housewife and mother? Would she have written twenty more novels, like many women of the literary world today? Some writers that followed the path of Metalious put out novels every three to six months, sometimes simulating a formula in plots that mimics the way hit songs are written for the radio. Surely Grace would have continued her dreams, generating imaginative characters and plots that were modern day Soaps or fiction. She obviously had few moments of writer’s block. Her works were published too close together, so speed in writing was a testimony to her innate ability to feel characters and scenes in rapid fashion. That alone is an admirable quality of the young woman’s abilities.

I was drawn to the world of Grace Metalious later in life. Serendipitous and unexpected, our lives crossed a few times by coincidence or fate. I never met her but wished that I had. I know about what she often writes. Life, love, sex, controversy, injustice and relationships, naughty and nice. By today’s writing standards, her sexual escapades envisioned and described in her books are irrelevant, inconsequential and mundane compared to modern writing of the 1990’s through to the present day. There is more sex in soap operas on TV and in magazines and videos than Grace could have ever envisioned in books.

The suppressed views and morality of the mid-1950’s was what poor Grace endured. Readers had those thoughts like she did but the expression of those thoughts in the written word or speech is what resulted in her ostracized life in the Granite State and beyond. Once her books became famed TV shows or movie productions, her naughty imagination spread throughout the world. Her books were hidden under pillows and in closets as hypocrites criticized her for her “filth” but loved to read them by flashlight when no one else in the family was awake or at home. They were stored in school lockers and in brown paper bags of yesteryear. Sex was as attractive to the masses in the 1950’s as it is today. The openness of sexuality today in the year 2006 merely corroborated what nature has never diminished over the 1900’s. Sex is natural and reproduction is biological - primal or otherwise. Fantasy is part of the biological process and natural to the mind, suppressed only by religious moral influences that desperately try to obliterate the fact that it is human nature to embrace love, have sex and the continuance of mankind through procreation and sexual pleasure. Except for deviate and illegal manifestations like incest, child abuse, rape and physical and mental demeaning offenses, sex and love are part of human health involving the brain’s natural desires and satisfaction.

Worming its way through a piece of fiction, the descriptive, written actions of Metalious were her way of making a new life for her family and children, Marsha, Michael and Cindy. Every writer aspires to gain financial reward and security from their imaginative tales. It is only in fiction when a tale mimics the realistic aspects of small town New England life that people object to and protest. Their privacy is transgressed and as Metalious noted, and I paraphrase “…like turning over a rock with your foot. All kind of strange things crawl out.”

The town of Peyton Place could be anywhere in the six New England states and was surely a composite of many experiences she noted in the short life she bestowed us. She had lived in White River Junction, VT, Belmont and Gilmanton. Any one of those villages was her Peyton Place inspiration and collage. I have seen the same scenario in the towns I have lived in for 30 years. My own novel, Return to Raby (Longtail Publishing, Laconia, NH) in 2003 was written before I had ever read Peyton Place, and yet we were kindred spirits in imagination and personal experiences.

“Write what you know,” was Mark Twain’s credo and she and I did just that, albeit decades apart. No fiction is devoid of real life or characters / personal characteristics experienced by the author since nothing could be composed without that life experience. The characters may or may not be composites or a collage of people one has known or met, or totally fabricated, and the expose of scenes and objects are usually based on real visions from one’s past. How else would one fabricate a story of merit, believability and credibility? Grace did it well in thought and word. If it irritated and implicated a community, who cares? Was that reason for a now famous town in the Lakes Region to ban her books from their library? Did it really take the donation by the famed Barbara Walters in 1976 to add the “filthy” literary book to their collection at the local library?

The novel, Peyton Place, may not have been about the town to begin with, but a mere composite of similar scenarios rolled into a compelling story of small town New England life. It could well have been a town in Vermont, Massachusetts or Connecticut. “Turning over a rock” in any town of less than 2,500 residents might yield the same vision that Grace Metalious fabricated and had the gumption to compose into a tale of intrigue and passion.

She was visible and walked the main streets of Laconia, shopping downtown at grocery, clothing and jewelry stores on the main drag. She drank with friends at The Tavern of the Stafford House adjacent to the eventual Boston & Maine (Concord and Montreal RR) stone railway station in full view of the Gale Memorial Library whose unique Romanesque Revival stone architecture she despised. The famed library celebrated its 100th, a centennial of note in 2003, where I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Barbara Delinsky that day, the prolific author of the 2005 novel, Looking for Peyton Place, (Scribner, 2005). She summers in Meredith. The Delinsky novel incorporates Grace’s “thinking” as interpreted by Delinsky in a creative and thoughtful way and through characters that also experience small town New Hampshire - “rocks that needed turning.”

I married a Gilmanton woman. She was not a native of the bucolic and quaint town but resided there between her life in Nashua, Amherst and Laconia. My wife, Brenda lived happily there in the purported Peyton Place for ten years, although we have known each other for over twenty years. She was my literary introduction to the name and fame of Grace Metalious. I say with some remorse that I had quite literally not remembered who wrote the famed novel from 1956, and in fact, only read it after moving to Laconia in 1999. My life in New Hampshire’s small towns totaled thirty years incorporating Amherst, Milford and Brookline. These were towns that, in my own personal experience, offered small to large rocks, sometimes boulders, identical to what Grace “rolled over” in imagination and fact.

The inspiration for this essay involved many people and occurrences that were serendipitous and then uncanny. There was a spirit that may have embraced Grace in some ways. I didn’t ask for it, but the coincidences and meeting of some of her friends and acquaintances, as well as being shown a real estate listing of her home on Meadow Pond Road for sale, led to little hints and inspirations that made me chase Grace’s life. We shied from touring the home when the listing included details of the home’s specifics - including a check mark next to the YES box and phrase, “Have their been any sightings?” I was in no way anticipating acquiring a home with ghosts of anyone, Grace or otherwise.

Now I regret not pursuing the listing further. Was that my chance to meet her, finally? As a mist or aberration? At the time of my desire to live in the Lakes Region, I knew nothing of Grace Metalious as a person, let alone her homes of note or what inspired her writing in the mid 1930’s -1960’s. The acknowledgement of sightings may have been a former resident anyway. It was female supposedly, but the home was 200-years- old as I recall. The aberration might have been a colonial person from yesteryear, a person murdered in the 1700’s or later. Who would know? The realtor actually discouraged us from pursuing the property by citing water well or septic issues and the need for extensive renovations that would be costly.

It is surmised by Grace’s close friend, Jeannie Gallant (NH Premier, 1994), that the book, Peyton Place cost Grace her marriage, her family and financial security. Gallant spoke at a recent Laconia Historical Society meeting at the library. She mentioned Grace writing 300 short stories (starting in 1936) before writing Peyton Place, a book, which was printed later in 108 languages. One short story was published in Glamour in 1960 according to one biography. Perhaps the others were lost. I spoke briefly with Ms. Gallant after her presentation. Ms. Gallant often maintained Grace’s children’s horses. She admitted that she would never divulge “all that she knew” of Grace – it was a private matter and she was respectful of Grace’s friendship and privacy. The home that we almost considered for a residence was Grace’s refuge, yet her privacy eluded her until her burial - a sad testimony to fame.

My wife showed me a first edition, hardcover copy of Peyton Place that she received as a gift from a prior employer in Nashua, New Hampshire. It sparked my quest to know more of the author and the town’s reaction to her works and eventual death. That, in turn, inspired me to search out the files and documentaries in written books, magazines and videos on Grace’s life.

The Gale Memorial Library in Laconia shared its manila folder(s) with me. The hard copy folders literally were the life of Grace in newspaper clippings, magazine articles and obituaries. The librarian kindly made me copies to study in depth. Literary historians around the world often requested them from her as well. Biographer, Emily Toth surely worked her way through the same printed matter and notes. Her comprehensive account of Grace’s life lacked for nothing. It made me wonder what else I could add historically to the short literary life of the famed author.

According to author, Delinsky’s “publisher’s” notes from her 2005 novel, Grace’s first printing of Peyton Place at one million copies grew to ten-million, a unprecedented accomplishment for that era. It continues to be a bestseller fifty years later and a standard like Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, a recluse and Cornish, New Hampshire writer, who remains in seclusion to this day. Unlike Grace who was “out there” for daily analysis, J.D. remains an enigma to those who wish to know him better. That will surely come after his death, like Grace, for that is the way it works. Biographies of Salinger are informative to date but lack most of the last forty years, a significant part of his elderly life. What thoughts and creations has he generated for publication for the future? As a recluse, a recent autographed letter of Salinger was listed for $25,000 on eBay. His daughter wrote well of him, her life and his idiosyncrasies, but it is incomplete of later years. Two other biographers wrote of him as well, and were chastised by Salinger for invading his life and privacy. What is to follow in future years will only be more fodder for researchers. Like Grace, writers and researchers will try and autopsy his life deeper and more pained in the written word.

I never met Grace but have wanted to sit with J.D. before he passes. For most people interested in his life and thoughts, he may as well be dead. No one transgresses his large parcel of land. We, who appreciate his literary creation(s), are barred from knowing the true Salinger. Letters go without acknowledgement and he apparently stays behind darkened windows, doors and fences. There is a hint that new manuscripts await publication.

Grace Metalious faced her admirers and her critics – a brave and torturous life we are led to believe. Mr. Salinger, admired and pursued for decades, will not relent to public scrutiny. Whether cowardly or just private, all authors must defend their creativity and writings in public. Just ask New Hampshire’s, Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code. They owe the public a defense of their credibility and need to share their secrets to aid the future students of literature. Grace Metalious never had that chance to share and teach.

Mr. Salinger benefits to this day from his royalties and Grace never did. Imagine her wealth had she lived to 2005. What would her life have been like had she fostered the youth of today’s pen, basked in the revenue from books, movies and a TV series? Would she have turned to the bottle as a crutch? Would she have been appreciated more for her fiction and abilities? The answer will never be an answer.

Two Laconia residents whom I admire as friends and acquaintances and consider local historians are both talented, as well as a gentleman and a lady. Warren D. Huse knows Laconia and the Lakes Region like the back of his hand. He is a gifted author and mental historical encyclopedia, all in one. He reminds local readers weekly of their heritage – writing a column in The Citizen. When I called to ask Warren whom he might know that could share their remembrances of Grace Metalious with me, he was first to link me to the photographer of Grace’s most famed photograph, Pandora in blue jeans. Larry Smith turned out to be my current neighbor, three doors down. Again, an act of fate or a premonition from Grace since Larry Smith only recently moved to my street as well as myself- six years ago or less. Mr. Huse had worked with Smith at The Citizen in years past.

The lovely lady and talented former (and sometimes current) local radio personality and gifted historian is Esther Peters, a true friend of the Polidoro’s and willing interviewer and conversationalist about local personalities and residents of note.

Esther Peters is the one who inspired this 2006 essay about Grace Metalious. In an interview of me by Esther regarding one of my novels, I had mentioned to her a couple of year’s back that I wanted to research Grace Metalious beyond what had already been written. That was my first mistake because Esther was knowledgeable about all of Grace’s friends- one of note remains and is Ms. Laurose Wilkens (MacFadyen). Others mentioned were Mr. George Cantin and Mr. Carroll Stafford. What has followed has been the constant, welcomed prodding by Esther Peters for me to follow through with my Grace Metalious writing. Although Esther anticipated another book or novel by me on Metalious, this essay is what evolved, partially inspired by Esther, Barbara Delinsky’s 2005 novel and the fact that Grace’s Peyton Place is in its dramatic 50th year of publication in 2006.

I had reminded Esther Peters, just recently at the Taylor Home in Laconia that “I had yet not figured out what I would write about Grace.” “The research was not over,” I emphatically told her with a smile. It was literally the impact of the impending 50th – half centennial of the book’s publication that Barbara Delinsky reminds us of, that was the “tipping point.” It occurred to me that in 2006, and I could be in error, but the Town of Gilmanton will unlikely host a tribute, testimonial or writer’s forum acknowledging Metalious’s great feats. Rather, it may be a “world of writers and admirers” that will inundate Gilmanton on foot or on the Internet, in blogs and in Web sites that will commemorate Grace’s contributions. The good, the bad and the ugly will prevail again in 2006, with the accolades, salacious referrals and the analyses of her life, once again. What were her actual thoughts and motives for writing they will ask (again)?

Selfishly, I wanted to beat the masses with a brief perspective as witnessed by some local folks who knew Grace personally. That I will elaborate about more. The time was right to compliment her before she became formaldehyde infused, histological sections in the anatomy and psychology of her brain by others far distant.

Once again, she will be resurrected…there will be documentaries, sound bytes, editorials, letters and movies (one by 20th Century Fox with Sandra Bullock perhaps, which Professor Toth at LSU informed me in an email in August, 2003, based on her biography) and reporters invading the Lakes Region from around the world. They will surely film interviews and scenes for posterity and broadcast live as well, or taped from downtown Laconia and Gilmanton center, seeking the memories/ rumor and opinions of the elderly or comments from the relenting disparagers who experienced the notoriety of Grace and her books in the late 1950’s - early 60’s – including all four novels.

She had surmounted the castigations and permutations of articles in Look magazine (1958), Life magazine (1956), American Weekly (1958) and the Ladies Home Journal, (1965). Her early life as a child of Franco-American descent has been documented by Robert Perreault and Richard Sorrell in 1980 (Historical NH). Her men of note, George Metalious, T.J. Martin and John Rees were integral parts of her life for better or for worse. Most of her male relationships used her for her notoriety and money. Some others, we are told, remain unknown or under secret “rocks unturned.”

Her prior critics, local and distant, had led her to comment, “If I’m a lousy writer, then a awful lot of people have lousy taste.” Obviously, millions bought her books.

The Four Corners of Gilmanton and the Town offices and churches will be background fillers as well as an unfortunate and historic theatre in current disrepair in Laconia. While the “Premiere” movie for Peyton Place took place in Camden, Maine (where it was filmed), Grace Metalious insisted that the “Premiere” for the movie, Return to Peyton Place, occur at the Colonial Theatre in Laconia. It was scheduled April 27, 1961.

While other New Hampshire theatres of note have been renovated in Keene, Concord, Manchester and Franklin, the famed Colonial in the Lakes Region and on the Main Street of Laconia desires the acknowledgement, love and inspiration of the arts community to refurbish it. It has been owned and rented, divided and usurped longitudinally as multiple movie theatre units like a Cinema 8. It sits closed and dark where video sales and rentals once replaced the popcorn machine and candy counters and ticket booth. Admirers of the structure, capable of live performances, have tried to revitalize it, but nothing short of a major endowment or philanthropist will restart the heart and body of the historic edifice once again illuminating the marquis in appreciation of its art deco history – a history that included movie stars and starlets that witnessed Grace’s novel in celluloid as the rich and famous “dressed to the nines” for the occasion. As an aside, Bette Davis once graced the Colonial Theatre as well for a different movie premiere.

There will be no paparazzi since Grace is gone, but the masses with interest in Grace Metalious will seek out The Tavern where she often drank her sorrows away, sometimes alone as we know. They will traverse the cemetery at Smith Meeting House hill and pay their respects to the site of her rest, filming and shooting on location, the lone isolated grave marker, which will have flowers and memorabilia of her life. There will be notes of love and appreciation at the foot of the pedestal, plastic flowers for posterity and balloons that say “We Miss You.” By 2007, it will all be a lost memory again until the 75th or 100th anniversary of the novel, Peyton Place.

I wanted to share my thoughts and interviews in advance of the much-anticipated circus that may ensue in 2006.

On May 6, 2002, I was invited into the home of Nancy and Larry Smith. I had written them requesting the visit. They reside on Old North Main Street and by chance had moved there not long after I moved my family there as well. Mr. Larry Smith is the famed “photographer” of the Metalious portrait known as “Pandora in blue jeans.” The unassuming photo is unique in that Larry Smith was the county editor for the Laconia Evening Citizen back in the 1960’s. He would spend his career at the newspaper, spanning some 40 years. Although not a professional photographer, Larry Smith was asked by friend, colleague and then reporter, Laurose Wilkens to photograph her author friend, Grace Metalious. Smith admittedly said he was not really a photographer but agreed to help. The photo was to be the promo for Grace Metalious’s breakthrough novel and would eventually be chosen as the dust jacket author photo of the infamous, Peyton Place.

Smith admitted that the camera and flash unit were Polaroid and Burke and Jameson 1950’s style models with frosted glass, a spring back, double back film and a detachable flash unit (~ 60 watts). My attempt to research the photographic equipment fell short but Smith hinted that local photographer Sam Achber and family of Laconia may know more.

Mr. Smith described Grace as a “rugged individual” who favored red and black or green and black-checkered shirts. At the home and living room of Laurose Wilkens, Larry photographed Grace in a checkered shirt, blue jeans and sneakers - her knees and elbows touching in a relaxed, thoughtful pose. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her feet elevated on the lower level of an apparent small table/ desk, Grace has her knuckles of closed hands aside her mouth as if in pensive thought. Her typewriter awaited her next piece of prose or dialogue. Sitting in an antique Hitchcock-like chair, she seemed at home in her friend’s abode – a pose for posterity.

The classic and timeless photo characterizes and epitomizes to this day Grace Metalious in her everyday attire. The book publisher had desired her to be photographed, apparently in a black dress and pearls, the antithesis of Grace’s preferred dress code. It was apparently Ms. Wilkens that helped choreograph the pose with Smith’s assistance. The photo was later to be used in every dust jacket that followed in virtually all renditions of Grace’s first novel (and others) and in promotions. To this day, the photo has precedence over more formal shots of Grace taken later – we owe Larry Smith a debt of gratitude for his timeless art captured on film.

When I asked if Larry Smith received royalties for his efforts and the famed black and white photo, he was quick to tell me, no. He really did it as a favor for Laurose who was in a quandary for a quick photo. He neither asked for, nor received remuneration. I was shocked and saddened that he lost that revenue to this day. Photographers today generally have the copyright to their works and he is credited for the photo, except in rare occurrences where the photo is shown without acknowledgement and in error. The Citizen, the Laconia newspaper has the rights to the photo according to General Manager and Editor, John Howe. That was commonplace in the 50’s and 60’s. Photos were the property of the papers back then. Mr. Howe has often granted permission for its use, knowing its history.

Sitting in their screen house / sunroom overlooking Lake Opechee, I was enchanted by Larry and Nancy’s informality and casual but direct answers to my inquiries. Mr. Smith seemed anxious to share his remembrances of Grace with me. Oddly, Grace’s children had swam at the public beach on the same lake. The Smith’s and the Polidoro’s live on that lake, as well.

By pure serendipity and fortuitous timing, it was an “editor” and by his own admission, a “non-professional” photographer that took the most famous photograph of Grace Metalious, the author. I have the pleasure of seeing Larry Smith or his wife retrieving their mail from the mailbox almost daily. He is a true gentleman with a cordial and humble demeanor.

On August 1, 2003, I met with Mr. Carroll Stafford at his home at his Pendleton Beach Road address on Lake Winnipesaukee – a short distance from Weirs Beach. In the heyday of The Tavern in downtown Laconia, there was a bar and lounge that Grace Metalious frequented and spent time with T. J. Martin and a Joe Dobbins. She spent time at a local Rod and Gun Club as well.

Mr. Stafford, a prominent businessman today and respected gentleman at the Laconia Savings Bank, was a bartender in his youth and served Grace her favorite Canadian Club (C.C.) cocktails. His uncle owned The Tavern Hotel at Main and Church Streets. From 1955-1957, he bartended summers at ages 21 and 22, in Laconia and Norwich, Vermont. His shift was generally 4-11 P.M. If Grace appeared, she might have her children with her. Since children were not allowed in the lounge, they were relegated to the nearby hotel lobby until she left.

The bar had no stools. It was manned by wait staff assigned to tables, which sat 5-6 people, Stafford recalls. On some occasions, Carroll Stafford offered to drive Grace home; for it was sometimes needed.

“I never saw her in a dress,” Mr. Stafford remarked to me, “except at the premiere of the film, Return to Peyton Place.” Carroll Stafford would know since he was personally invited to the premiere at the Colonial Theatre. With that, he showed me the actual invitation (in letter form), which he had saved all these years. It was personally signed by the manager of the Colonial Theatre, Ralph Morris and co-sponsored by 20th Century Fox. There was a follow-on party after the premiere, Stafford stated, that took place at Bernie Snierson’s place. Snierson was Grace’s personal lawyer.

Because of Grace’s newfound wealth, she sometimes flaunted her money by taking friends from The Tavern to Boston Celtics’ games in Boston. “They would fly to Logan airport,” Mr. Stafford states. It was well known that friends and acquaintances used Grace in that manner. Impromptu, compulsive flights from Laconia were apparently frequent.

“Grace Metalious enjoyed Canadian Club whiskey with ginger ale and a lemon twist,” Mr. Stafford recalls. Always a gentleman, Mr. Stafford never eluded to anything negative with respect to Grace Metalious. He then shared with me a personal copy of a first edition, Peyton Place novel. Grace had inscribed the following, dated September, 1956:

To Carroll “Butch” Stafford

of Laconia and Norwich

in gratitude for his gentle hand with a C.C.

and ginger -----------

Grace Metalious

The 1956 inscription, personalization and autograph left me warmed in that I had also acquired a Grace Metalious signed and embossed 3X6 inch formal note card a few years earlier, which matched her signature in Carroll Stafford’s Peyton Place. My card is personalized to a Roger Harris with Best Wishes and her signature. It was dated January, 1964, one month before her death. Her untimely demise would follow in February, 1964. The note card was accompanied by an authentic 8X10 inch promotional, black and white photo that revealed Grace in a professional striped suit jacket and white blouse and sitting at a desk and typewriter. A fluted drape was her backdrop. I believe it was created in New York to hype her Return to Peyton Place book release. Blank stationary, a clean crystal ashtray and pencils and a pen are on or are near the professional leather desk pad. She was smiling to one side as one hand rested on the top of the typewriter. Fabricated for press releases and the masses I suspect, but don’t know - her smile reveals a non-pensive mood that was vividly common in her first photo, “Pandora in blue jeans.”

One of the most fun interviews I entertained was with George Cantin of Laconia. We met at the Black Cat café and at my home. One year ago, 2004, the elderly, Mr. Cantin passed - he was a popular man who taught dance (44 yrs.) in the Lakeport portion of Laconia, in his younger years. He taught dance to Grace’s children, sometimes driving the children home because Grace was still at The Tavern. Mr. Cantin and Grace often met at The Tavern on Friday nights. Mr. Cantin, who was open and vocal about his alternate lifestyle /sexuality and humorous at all times, had an infectious laugh. He was an entertainer to the end.

He would visit our home on occasion. George Cantin expressed his friendship with Grace in the book by Dr Toth. He was interviewed in other chronologies about Grace, as well. They drank together. He remembered the oak paneled bar that is long since gone. I visited the current Stafford House (Old Tavern Hotel) where some elderly, assisted living patrons currently reside. Individual rooms for residents replace the old Tavern and lounge and the exact window where Grace castigated the library architecture could not be discerned for sure. Numerous windows faced the building across the street.

In October of 2002, during my interview, I noted Cantin’s fondness for Grace. She called him “Cantin,” not George, he recollected.

She had told him, “you’re the only one who brings your own booze,” and she thanked him when he visited her home. He jested to me that he often really took it from her own liquor cabinet, immoral in my mind, but still laughable. That was George Cantin – I’m sure a prankster in school in his youth. George admitted that five years prior to our meeting, he had met the woman who was raped, the famed, inference to the woman abused in the novel by Grace. Mr. Cantin eluded also to a Charles Roberts, an Englishman, who was the brother of the “actual character” who was murdered as Grace had written in the first novel, as well. A neighbor of Cantin’s knew the “character” personally, he recalled.

I asked George Cantin if Grace ever “wrote” while at The Tavern. He said, no…she only wrote at home. This corroborates most research that she wrote late into the night, avoiding sleep. George viewed Grace as “a sloppy woman – someone who didn’t care.” That did not deter their friendship.

George Cantin did not care for George Metalious, he said. He did not elaborate on the comment. Although Cantin possessed personal artifacts and written articles on Grace, his prized possession was his 1956 signed, Peyton Place.

The personal inscription from Grace read:

For George Cantin

- for doing a cha-cha

- for making me laugh

- for being such a nice guy ------

Grace Metalious

When I asked George Cantin if Grace ever looked sexy, he smiled, “When she pouted.” He first met her at The Tavern when she needed a dime to use the ladies room stall. He said he didn’t have a dime but he crawled under the door for her and opened the latch from the inside. That humorous scenario initiated their long friendship.

“She loved me,” he said, smiling. George loved scotch back then and said that Grace did as well, but most historical notes suggest her real love was the liquor, C.C. If he couldn’t drive Grace home after a night out, she would tell him, “don’t worry, if you can’t do it, someone else can.”

Cantin gave up drinking 35 years prior to our interview. He attended A.A., he said. Aside from his dance studio, he worked at Shangra-la and the Kings Court Resort/ hotel in his youth. Following Grace’s death, he would walk to work and by the Bayside Cemetery winter vault that held caskets until the spring thaw. George Cantin claimed that Grace was kept there until her burial in the spring of 1964. If he walked to his job at the Kings Court, he would bow and say, “Hi Gracie or Good Morning, Gracie” as he passed the temporary internment building. The 1882 structure was recently renovated in 2005 and is utilized now for the internment of cremated, client’s remains. I have never confirmed if the Wilkinson-Beane Funeral home in Laconia, that handled Grace’s funeral, stored her there as George Cantin had suggested.

When George Cantin visited Grace at her final resting place on Smith Meeting House hill, he would steal nearby flowers to place on her grave. As mischievous as he was, he loved that woman, Grace. It was clear that during his last visit to our home, he brought all the personalized artifacts and memorabilia about Grace to show us. I hope they were passed on to good hands after his own death.

I miss George Cantin who was waked at the same funeral home as Grace – Wilkinson-Beane. The Knights of Columbus attended to his viewings, rotating sentries at frequent intervals, but ever present as a formalized guard of honor. George Cantin was a classic in his own right and an avid reader of books, Grace’s included.

I met one other person with respect to Grace Metalious. It was on August 1, 2003 as I sat drinking coffee at the Paugus Diner. Across the road from the diner is the vault that is dated 1889 at Bayside Cemetery, the implied temporary home for Grace in the winter of 1964.

The only salacious remarks I had heard, in all references about Grace today, were voiced by a man who once delivered propane to Grace’s home. An apparent retired resident of the Laconia area since 1956, he knew her, he claimed. He seemed aware of some of the Gilmanton School Board members that made life a bit difficult for George and Grace Metalious shortly after Peyton Place was published. It is well known that George Metalious lost his principal’s job in Gilmanton over his wife’s popular, but infamous novel.

The man next to me in the diner joked, “Grace? Why if she had as many pricks sticking out of her as she had in her, she’d be a porcupine.” Sensing my response to his inhumane, callous lack of appreciation for the famed woman, he followed with another bit of prose, “The fish that’s left in the pond is the one that keeps his mouth shut.” Uneasy with his implied threat by the last quote, I finished the coffee and left the diner.

There will always be those who see the glass as half empty and not half full. Those people that continue to castigate the dead by disrespectful inference really didn’t know Grace Metalious any more than I did. I would have relished the opportunity to have known her, talked with her and celebrated her success. Few modern day men or women writers will ever have the same impact on literature that she left as a legacy to the world.

Happy 50th Peyton Place and Grace

May they celebrate your life and the auspicious occasion of the Peyton Place anniversary and your other novels, as well as their relevance to life in small, New England towns. With other “rocks to be turned over” in the future, I’m sure you have inspired other young writers to follow your approach and pen more of the unknown organisms that fester below the surface of all terra firma.

I treasure to think that if Carroll Stafford, Jack Polidoro and George Cantin’s Grace collections were displayed in the Gale Memorial Library for 2006, it would be a good start toward commemorating the legacy and accomplishments of author, Grace Metalious. I am sure there are others who would temporarily loan their memorabilia for a 2006 display as well.

There is also a new library nearing completion in the Town of Gilmanton where Grace lived and wrote. I hope to see all of her novels in the stacks of the reconstructed and elaborate barn, turned modern library, on Route 140. After 50 years, it is time to honor her for being one of the world’s most noted woman authors.

Lastly, the Laconia Colonial Theatre needs to be renovated to host the premiere of “Grace” which is to be a forthcoming movie based on Dr. Emily Toth’s biography of the life of Grace Metalious. Perhaps that will be a concerted financial endeavor and goal in 2006 by those that celebrate to this day her life and works.