The 1957 movie "Peyton Place" set the stage and provided the fodder for this 1961 movie. One of the young schoolgirls aspired to be an author and here she writes a novel based on her growing up in Peyton Place and the tragic events depicted in the 1957 movie. The book becomes a best seller and she receives an award for a new novelist but it stirs up trouble in Peyton Place among the townspeople who consider it pornographic trash.
To me it isn't helpful to directly compare the two movies, they have different slates of actors and the moods are quite different. The 1957 movie feels more like all the older movies that came before while the 1961 movie feels a lot more modern. I enjoyed both of them as they have different focuses and different ways to tie things up and move forward.
Of note both Carol Lynley and Tuesday Weld were actual teenagers, 18 and 17, during filming. Jeff Chandler was already 41 and he died the not long after the movie was released. I have been a Carol Lynley fan since I saw her in "Blue Denim" and it was fun seeing her in this role as the new author. Mary Astor, getting closer to the end of her career, is superb as the selfish mother and town school board member who was the strongest objector to the new novel, and also pretty much everything else that went on the town unless she already approved of it. I believe every small town has one of those ladies.