Grace Metalious’ once-notorious bestseller Peyton Place is given a lavish — and necessarily toned-down — film treatment in this deluxe 20th Century-Fox production. Set during WWII, the film concentrates on several denizens of the outwardly respectable New England community of Peyton Place. Top-billed Lana Turner plays shopkeeper Constance McKenzie, who tries to make up for a past indiscretion — which resulted in her illegitimate daughter Allison (Diane Varsi) — by adopting a chaste, prudish attitude towards all things sexual. In spite of herself, Constance can’t help but be attracted to handsome new teacher Michael Rossi (Lee Philips). Meanwhile, the restless Allison, who’d like to be as footloose and fancy-free as the town’s “fast girl” Betty Anderson (Terry Moore), falls sincerely in love with mixed-up mama’s boy Norman Page (Russ Tamblyn).

Coogan (Clint Eastwood) an Arizona deputy sheriff goes to New York to pick up a prisoner. While escorting the prisoner to the airport he escapes and Coogan heads into the City to recapture him.

A sharecropper fights the elements to start his own farm.

After killing a prison guard, convict Robert Stroud faces life imprisonment in solitary confinement. Driven nearly mad by loneliness and despair, Stroud’s life gains new meaning when he happens upon a helpless baby sparrow in the exercise yard and nurses it back to health. Despite having only a third grade education, Stroud goes on to become a renowned ornithologist and achieves a greater sense of freedom and purpose behind bars than most people find in the outside world.

The story about Gloria Wandrous, a promiscuous fashion model, who falls in love with Weston Liggett, the hard drinking son of a working class family who has married into money.

In a mission in China in 1935, Agatha Andrews is a rigid missionary beset by Mongolian bandits led by Warlord chief Tunga Khan. With her are her assistant Jane Argent, staff members Emma Clark, Miss Russell and Miss Binns, head of the British mission, Charles Pather, a teacher at the mission and his pregnant wife Florrie. When Dr. D.R. Cartwright arrives, she agrees to sacrifice herself to the Tunga Khan in exchange for his letting the ladies go free.

A mentally retarded giant and his level headed guardian find work at a sadistic cowboy’s ranch in depression era America.