It Was 50 Years Ago Today: ‘Valley of the Dolls’ by Jacqueline Susann
November 8, 2016
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
#1 on the New York Times Best Seller List (Fiction), May 8 – November 19, 1966
“Yeah, I think I’ll be remembered … as the voice of the ’60s….Andy Warhol, the Beatles and me!”
–Jacqueline Susann
On December 27, 1962, 44-year-old Jacqueline Susann underwent a mastectomy to combat her breast cancer. She had spent over two decades in show business, acting (but not starring) in dozens of plays on and off Broadway.
She had transitioned to television with moderate success, appearing on a panel show, acting on the sitcom The Morey Amsterdam Show, and serving as spokesmodel for Schiffli Lace. All her life, she had struggled to be a star but had never quite made it.
Her encounter with cancer, however, made Susann determined to make full use of the time she had been given and ensure that her name would endure after her death. While Susann’s decision to become a published author may have seemed unlikely — she had never attended college, nor did she move in particularly literary circles — it wasn’t entirely out of the blue.
In the early ’40s, she had co-written a play, Lovely Me, that closed on Broadway after three weeks. She had also written and produced her own ad spots for Schiffli Lace. For years, she had percolated the idea for a novel about the dark side of show business, which she had known so well.
First, however, came a book about her pet poodle, 1963’s Every Night, Josephine! The novel was a moderate hit in its own right, but its true value was as a dry run for future success. First, it taught Susann and her husband, TV producer and publicist Irving Mansfield, lessons about promoting books, down to designing a cover that would show up best on low-def, bleeding color televisions of the ’60s. Secondly, it gave Susann the clout to write the book she really wanted.
Susann may not have had the literary bonafides of most of the leading authors of the era, but she had a talent for gossip and an insight into the seedy side of showbiz glamor. She structured her novel as 20 years (1945-1965) in the life of three women who flirted with fame: Jennifer North, who knows her only asset is her uncanny beauty, but manages to carve out a career as a movie star; Neely O’Hara, a genuine talent with a wide self-destructive streak; and Anne Welles, who starts out a secretary in a publicist’s office and winds up an accidental model and television star. Apart from their careers in show business, the trio shares an astonishing amount of bad luck with men as well as a reliance on a rainbow’s worth of uppers, downers, and pep pills to get them through their lives.
The title Valley of the Dolls took its name from Susann’s pet term for pills, which she herself had begun taking to cope with her son Guy’s autism and his departure for a group home. The rest of the novel was likewise littered with autobiographical detail, including Anne’s spokesmodel career and Jennifer’s breast cancer.
More salaciously, however, were the coded references throughout the novel to actual stars Susann had known. Jennifer bore a resemblance to starlet Carole Landis, while has-been Broadway belter Helen Lawson was modeled on Ethel Merman. Most infamously, pills-addled, fame-hungry Neely, always on the cusp of a comeback, was a dead ringer for Judy Garland, who in turn was cast in the novel’s subsequent film adaptation. (In a very Valley of the Dolls-like turn of events, Garland’s addictions and unprofessional behavior led to her being kicked off the movie.)
Readers may have been intrigued by Valley’s glimpse into stars’ private lives and its racy sex scenes, but what really sold the book was Susann and Mansfield’s precisely calibrated publicity campaign. As Mansfield told Life magazine in August 1966, in the middle of Valley’s six-month reign atop the New York Times Best Seller list, “If you want a book to be a bestseller you can’t just reach book-buying people, you have to get to those who never bought a book before in their lives.
“You advertise on the entertainment pages, not just book pages. And you think a lot about television.” Indeed, Susann became a regular fixture on TV for years, bedecked in designer clothes, towering hairdos, and elaborate makeup befitting the over-the-top glamor of her novel.
Susann and Mansfield’s knack for promotion (goosed by a sketchy book-buying campaign aimed at the retailers polled for the bestseller list) paid dividends far beyond anyone’ expectations. Within a decade, Valley of the Dolls had sold 30 million copies, making it the biggest-selling novel of the time.
Susann’s next two books, 1969’s The Love Machine and 1972’s Once is Not Enough, both matched Valley’s #1 spot, making her the first author to send three novels in a row to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list.
Despite Susann’s popular success, however, she was routinely trashed by critics and the literary establishment throughout her career, who rallied against her books’ tastelessness and her supposed lack of talent. Fifty years on, however, Valley of the Dolls seems remarkably tame, given its reputation. (Any given “literary” bestseller of today likely features more explicit depictions of sex and/or drugs.)
Likewise, in an era when repurposed fan fiction can become a cultural phenomenon, Susann’s sharp-witted plotting and knack for compelling characters and situations make her come across as Jane Austen in comparison.
Valley of the Dolls may never replace Shakespeare or Dickens in the canon of great literature, but it’s worth being remembered 50 years on — even if modern audiences are likely more familiar with the 1967 movie, an enduring camp classic starring Sharon Tate and Patty Duke.
Susann’s claim to being “the voice of the ’60s” turned out to be surprisingly accurate, as Valley of the Dolls’s frankness, cynicism, and iconoclasm mirrors the themes running through much of the decade’s art. Susann may never have earned critical respect, but the modern publishing industry — from content to publicity — bears the influence of her success.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
