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Betty, stunning but certifiable, married Steven Cord who had defended Rodney on a murder charge, then two years later remarried Rodney. The fragile Allison eventually ‘disappeared’ mysteriously in a fog (when actress Mia Farrow continually upset producers by skipping recordings to be with Ol’ Blue Eyes).Īllison was not forgotten, however, and from time to time young girls would appear with clues to her disappearance. In the course of her affair with Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow’s hair was suddenly chopped off, leaving the show’s writers to explain why Allison now looked like Joan of Arc. Today it seems tame, with Allison Mackenzie remaining a virgin for 200 episodes.

Soap opera central com series#

While Allison stood around looking little-girl-lost and squeaking in a Minnie Mouse voice, Betty set out to get Rodney Harrington by foul means or fouler and tricked him into marriage by claiming he was the father of her unborn child.Ĭonveniently, most of the seductions and murders had happened in the past, but the series was still tagged television’s first ‘sex opera’. The other storyline was the love of full-time bookshop-owner and part-time emotional wreck Constance Mackenzie (Dorothy Malone) for Rossi, the only man who knew that Elliot Carson, the father of Constance’s illegitimate daughter Allison, was serving 18 years in prison.īarbara Parkins made a fine foil to fey Mia Farrow’s Allison with her mane of golden hair. One plotline was the pregnancy, miscarriage and loveless marriage of Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) to rich Rodney Harrington (Ryan O’Neal) who really loved the chaste Allison. The link between two interweaving sagas was the town’s handsome Dr Michael Rossi (Ed Nelson). The saga told of the lives and loves of the Harrington’s, Carson’s, Mackenzie’s and Andersons, and made complicated love affairs with breathless sex its main ingredient, and every episode ended with a corny cliff-hanger.

It was the first major American soap, and also the first to be screened on British television.

Based on Grace Metalious’s steamy best-selling novel, this romantic and tempestuous drama was set in the small New England town of Peyton Place, a community seething with extramarital affairs and dark secrets of every kind.