Triple Jeopardy

Any other TV producer would think his ship had come in if one of his inge nues were piped aboard Frank Sinatra's good ship Southern Breeze. But Paul Monash, executive producer of ABC's Peyton Place, needed Mia Farrow's cruise like a hole in the hull. For one thing, Peyton Place had all the voyeur interest it needed on-screen without any help from off-screen publicity. For another, even before all the headlines from Cape Cod, Peyton Place's ratings were about as high as they could go. "Realistic Escapism." When Peyton Place was first announced for the 1964-65 season, the industry wondered if ABC programming had been taken over by some kind of nut. The network was not only gambling on soap opera in prime time but also doubling the stakes with another innovation--running the untested show two nights a week. But the network reasoned that 1) audiences could be hooked as easily in the evening as in the afternoon by the serial format, and 2) that the U.S., newly caught up in the "romantic escapism" of Ian Fleming, might be similarly ripe for the "realistic escapism" of Grace Metalious. Realism, of course, turned out to be a euphemism for a concentration of sexual adventurism such as no network had ever risked before. In its first season, Peyton Place was so successful that in June the network added a third weekly show, making the schedule Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 9:30 p.m. (E.D.T.). Ever since, even the laggard in the entry was never out of the Top 15, and at one point, the whole trio was bunched into the first five. The trick is if you see one, you have to see them all--all of the series' half dozen crises are mentioned and in tensified in every episode. Though the first Peyton Place was to have the same protagonists and proclivities as Metalious' peeping tome, Producer Monash insisted that the tone would be different. The novel, he says, was "a negativistic attack. Ours is a love affair with the town. The general feeling we have is of people evolving toward the light." But after 102 episodes, there has been little perceptible evolution. Last week's three chapters, for instance, interwove the multiple subplots without even a glimmer of psychic peace or a fleeting, joyous guffaw. Dr. Vincent Markham, back home after winning "international renown as the Albert Schweitzer of the Andes," was, it turned out, on the brink of divorce because he could not relate to women, and on the road to suicide because of sibling rivalry with a twin brother. The town's most dynamic executive, David Schuster, was feeling trapped at the office and in a sick second marriage that was turning his lovely, congenitally deaf daughter into a willful mute. And even the last nice teen-age girl in town, Allison MacKenzie (Mia Farrow), was at 18 facing Life: Schuster, she learned, was interested in her for more than her baby-sitting services. "Basically Moral." But Monash sees "nothing offensive" in such plotting. "Why don't our critics," he asks, "count up what happens in the three hours King Lear is on the stage?" Not that ABC is really counting (except its audiences). Its prime defense, enunciated repeatedly by Programming Director Adrian Samish, is that "the show is basically very clean and moral, because wrongdoers are punished." For instance, when the richest boy in town gets the daughter of his father's secretary pregnant, he is compelled to marry her. But then the girl herself breaks the code. She has an accidental mis carriage before the wedding but does not tell him and she gets her punishment--the marriage is annulled. Keeping solemn tab on the retributions, not to mention the whole 32-character plot line, is the responsibility of Peyton Place's "story board." The board, consisting of three senior writers, and aided by a constantly updated chart presentation that probably has no counterpart outside the Pentagon's "war room," lays out each episode. Five junior writers then turn their scenarios into finished scripts. None of the eight writers is over 35; only two earn less than $1,000 a week. Expensive Trappings. But they have to work to stay in that bracket. The cameras grind away on the back lot at 20th Century-Fox in Hollywood filming three half-hour episodes a week--more than the average movie crew shoots in a month. Thus the production is less polished than a feature film and sometimes barely distinguishable from the commercials Nevertheless, should ratings and sponsorship warrant, the staff stands ready for what could be "the next step" --four segments a week. All shows are filmed, and the stockpile is kept at 30. Thus, to cover Mia Farrow's absence at sea last week, Allison had an auto accident and fell into a coma, anxiously watched over by Mom (Dorothy Malone) and Dr. Michael Rossi (Ed Nelson). But because of the backlog, viewers will not see this momentous catastrophe until mid-November. And before Mia embarked, Peyton Place directors forehandedly shot advance footage of her in a comatose state and found a lie-in double who could almost fool Frank. Meantime, Peyton Place's 50 million frequenters have enough else to agonize over. Like whether Allison's father will take over the Clarion, and with it, the collateral duty of "the conscience of Peyton Place." Or if Dr. Markham can save his marriage, not to mention his life. Or if that other subcharacter, Rita Jacks, really is, as she fears, "no good. Joe kissed me, and when he kissed me --for a second, for a minute--I didn't want to stop . . ." Which, ABC trusts, is the way the viewers will continue to feel about Peyton Place.

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