Valley of the Dolls

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The greatest line from the movie actually comes straight out of the book. Neeley chides her nemesis, aging star Helen Lawson, by saying "I saw that fag you came in with." To which Lawson replies "At least I didn't marry one." And then the famous cat fight ensues. Neely's drug and alcohol abuse lands her in the same sanitarium as Tony, where they discover each other when Neely begins singing in the common area and he joins her. After she is released, Lyon gets her a role in a Broadway play. Neely soon causes trouble by having an affair with Lyon and attending a press party for Helen Lawson. During a catfight in the ladies' room, Neely removes Helen's wig and throws it in the toilet. Lyon ends his relationship with Neely when she relapses and is replaced by her understudy. Neely continues her bender at a nearby bar and is left screaming and sobbing in a deserted alley when the bar closes. Anne: Lyon we can’t move to Lawrenceville I hate it there, I’d rather die [followed by a huge fight and Lyon went awol]

Valley of the Dolls (novel) - Wikipedia

Century Fox wanted contract star Raquel Welch to play Jennifer but she turned it down, not wanting to play a "sexpot" role. She asked to play Neely but the studio refused. [7] This book took me on a wild adventure and I loved every second of it. It was fascinating going on a journey with the three girls. They all started off so naive and sweet and then things took a turn for them and they became so hardened. On her 56th birthday, August 20, 1974, Susann was admitted to Doctors Hospital for the last of her 18 stays there. In her final days Susann said to her husband, “Maybe we’ve had too many secrets. Guy, my illness earlier, my illness now.” Mansfield told Oscar Dystel that shortly before she died, Susann, in the throes of a delusion, ripped off her turban and commanded her husband, “Let’s blow this joint!”—which she finally did at 9:02 P.M. on September 21, 1974. The secret of Susann’s terminal illness had been so rigorously guarded, the press—wary of yet another publicity stunt—called 200 Central Park South repeatedly for confirmation.This book is a cult classic and I can definitely see why. There is something oddly intoxicating about it. Like it’s kind of trashy but at the same time so ahead of its time. It’s kind of ridiculous at times but still manages to convey a message to readers.

Valley of the Dolls (film) - Wikipedia Valley of the Dolls (film) - Wikipedia

Years after its original release, the film became a so-bad-it’s-good classic about the perils of fame. John Williams received his first of 50 Oscar nominations for composing the score. Mark Robson directed it, and he notoriously fired the booze- and drug-addled Judy Garland, who was cast to play aging actress Helen Lawson (Susan Hayward took over), who was supposedly based on Garland. (Garland died on June 22, 1969 from a barbituate overdose.) Two months after Garland’s sudden demise, the Manson Family murdered the very pregnant Tate in August 1969. Hey don't be fooled by the persona. I may spend some of my free time reading and deeply thinking about important literature, but people who know me also know I am a habitual online reader of celebrity gossip. It probably speaks to some weird primal impulse to raise individuals to mythic proportions and then tear them down, but also, more relevantly to this discussion, a manifestation of the rather schizophrenic cultural attitudes that define "success". If we really think "success" should be moral and material, why do we think they are contradictory? The wild, scandalous, fun, and depressing lives of New York's young and ambitious women trying to make it to the top. Once they get there, however, it's all but dolls from there. They jump into willful ignorance and disregard. All the attention, fame, and effort put into getting what they desire doesn't equate to the so-called glamorous and happy life. The struggle seemed to never leave, but the help of dolls brought on a way to cope. It's going to be really difficult for me to rate this, because I can't deny that I enjoyed it. It was, by definition, craptastic, or as my good friend Em likes to say, trashtastic. I mention Em because I did this buddy read with her, and that made it all the more an enjoyable experience. She's as much a masochist as I am, and we find the same things ironically funny, so all in all, it was fun. Read her review, because her analysis is better than mine, as is her sense of humour.Green, David B. This Day in Jewish History 1974: Jacqueline Susann, Who Knew What You Really Want to Read, Dies. Haaretz. September 21, 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2017. Why was Valley of the Dolls, movie and book, such an extraordinary success? Don Preston believes the answer lies in the Mansfields’ peerless promotional skills. Clearly, it could not just have been the risqué subject matter; more prurient books were available, although maybe not ones a secretary could safely read on the subway. Without doubt Susann had an authentic, almost evangelical empathy for female emotional experience, at the exact moment when women’s place in the world was about to undergo a seismic upheaval. Above all, she knew her audience. Before People or Hollywood Babylon had ripped the scales from the public’s eyes, “ Valley of the Dolls showed that a woman in a ranch house with three kids had a better life,” Susann said, “than what happened up there at the top.” What a scary story!! Encapsulated in a wonderful setting of New York in the 1900s. Anne, Jennifer & Neely felt like real people to me, and Anne has now become one of my favourite fictional characters <3 Let me write a sequel about her life after this ending!! So is the book a camp classic, and if so is that a bad thing? Susan Sontag writes in her essay Notes on Camp: “Many examples of Camp are things which, from a ‘serious’ point of view, are either bad art or kitsch.” But she also writes “some art which can be approached as Camp merits the most serious admiration and study. The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance. . . Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgment. Camp is generous. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of ‘character’. Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying.” Or, to put it another way, as Paul Burston says: “Susann typed the manuscript of Valley of the Dolls on pink paper. I still think this alone makes it a camp classic.” Susann did not ditch her typewriter yet—she and Bea next tried writing an exposé about women in show business, a Valley of the Dolls precursor entitled Underneath the Pancake. Susann also availed herself of the wide-open opportunities of live television, frenetically pushing sponsors’ products—Quest-Shon-Mark bras, Sunset appliances, Hazel Bishop cosmetics, and Vigorelli sewing machines—on a spate of ill-fated programs, some of which she hosted.

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann | Goodreads

I was most fascinated with Anne and Lyon Burke. Their relationship was so interesting. I loved the way she talked about him in the beginning of the novel. She was so in love with him. Anne and Lyon start a romance, but Lyon resists Anne's wish to marry. When he abruptly leaves for England, Anne is distraught; she is further upset when her mother dies. Soon Anne's poise and natural beauty attract the attention of her boss's client, Kevin Gillmore, who hires her to promote his line of cosmetics in television and print ads. Kevin falls in love with Anne, but their relationship ends amicably when Anne realizes they are incompatible.The soft numbness began to slither through her body. Oh, God! How had she ever lived without these gorgeous red dolls! This is probably the 5th time I've read this novel, the first being sometime in the late 90s ...and I've enjoyed it every single time. Jacqueline Susann was so far ahead of her time, it's almost laughable. Written in the 60s, and published for the first time in 1966, so much of this book is still relevant, and holds true, today. I guess very little ever changes in the lives of celebrities: body dysmorphia, pills, lesbianism, cheating, scandal, rehab...it's all here, but it sure sounds like 2019, right?

The Real-Life Sex and Scandal That Inspired Jacqueline Susann

In an interview with Roger Ebert, Susann offered her thoughts on why Garland was let go. “Everybody keeps asking me why she was fired from the movie, as if it was my fault or something,” she said. “You know what I think went wrong? Here she was, raised in the great tradition of the studio stars, where they make 30 takes of every scene to get it right, and the other girls in the picture were all raised as television actresses. So they’re used to doing it right the first time. Judy just got rattled, that’s all.” 5. PATTY DUKE PARTIALLY BLAMES THE DIRECTOR’S BEHAVIOR FOR GARLAND’S EXIT. a b Symonds, Alexandria. 'Valley of the Dolls', by the numbers. T: The New York Times Style Magazine. February 9, 2016. Retrieved January 10, 2017. Garland got revenge in “taking” the beaded pantsuit she was supposed to wear in the movie, and she was unabashed about it. “Well, about six months later, Judy’s going to open at the Palace,” Duke said. “I went to opening night at the Palace and out she came in her suit from Valley of the Dolls.” 8. A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE FILM HID THE TITLE. Daniels, Mary. Susann's Best Love Story a Private Affair. Chicago Tribune. August 15, 1976. Retrieved January 10, 2017.Another important difference is that the film is clearly set in the mid-to-late 1960s and the events unfold over the course of a few years, whereas in the book the story begins in 1945 and develops throughout two decades. Anne was just a small town girl living in the lonely world who took the midnight train going to New York. She and her friends Neely and Jennifer are just three girls trying to make it in '40s New York. Anne, educated at Radcliffe, is an all-American girl, who starts off as a secretary, but becomes the face of a cosmetics line. Neely, fresh-faced and nervous, who by her talent rises to become one of Hollywood's greatest stars. Jennifer, gorgeous, is defined by her beauty rather than by who she is as a person. Would have worked too, had Susann not decided to make caricatures of her characters.