When watching once again Mark Robson’s 1957 Hollywood adaptation of Grace Metalious‘ PEYTON PLACE, my iPad gave me this haunting present of an image. Lana Turner changing body within a single shot – a pure accident and at the same time a perfect metaphor for the production history of the whole PEYTON PLACE franchise – which tells a history of remediation and repression, excavation and exorcism, scandalization and serialization.
In this neurotic family novel a forbidden book gives birth to a completely reshaped movie, which in turn gives birth to another novel, which in turn gives birth to a once again completely different movie, which in turn gives birth to one of the first American TV-soaps, which in turn gives birth to a book of poetry.

Dazu: CONTINUING PEYTON PLACE: DAS MELODRAMA UND SEINE BASTARDE