"Valley Of The Dolls" (1967)

I highly recommend this book for any fans of the film. Full of tidbits like Debbie Reynolds wanted to play Neely and Petula Clark and Tammy Grimes came very close to getting the role.

Debbie Reynolds as Neely? Oy. Talk about being a little long in the tooth for a role...

You may find this thread of interest.

VOTD is worthy of multiple threads!

R2. Older than dirt and twice as annoying.

oh please OP. Just because the novel was a hit doesn't mean anyone wanted to be associated with it. Trash is trash.

The cast was very far from A-list, most of the main actors came from television, Sharon Tate had mostly been in exploitation and B-movies, and director Mark Robson, though promising in the 1940s and a biggish deal in the 1950s (“Peyton Place”) was well into his hack phase by the mid-“60s.

None of it mattered, as bad as the film was and as poorly reviewed as it was, it was as big a cash cow as the book had been and made a fortune relative to budget.

GOWNS by TRAVILLA.

The book balanced the fabulousness and the misfortunes of all three main characters' much better than the movie. It seems like they skipped two beats and then went straight to the pills. Sharon Tate was not the worst actress in it, either.

[quote] Sharon Tate was not the worst actress in it, either.

Well fuck you.

The three characters never even have one scene together in the movie save for a still shot of them at Neely’s wedding. In the book, they were all roommates for a while.

I couldn’t get through five pages of the book. Loved the campy movie since I was a kid.

It turned Robert Evans into one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Robson had turned another trashy noel (Peyton Place) into a decent and financially successful film. That may have been why he was chosen.

I’m sure it was, R14, but “Peyton Place” was ten years earlier, and that film had a sense of detail and character development and a genuine atmosphere of a small New England town (filmed in Camden, Maine.)

“Valley of the Dolls” was cheap schlock with a somewhat atmospheric opening in the prologue before going flashily downhill from there.

Not that I’m complaining, I love watching it.

[quote]R11 The three characters never even have one scene together… In the book, they were all roommates for a while.

Yes. And before that they’re all connected to Helen’s musical HIT THE SKY! For chapter upon chapter…

I will say this till the day I die: Barbara Parkins is deadly boring as Anne, and she’s at the center of the story.

R17. Imagine her as Neely.

dear lord.

She even makes Neely into a limp, wet rag.

R19 You're being obnoxious!

And Richard Dreyfuss before he was Richard Dreyfuss!

R21. And Nathan Lane played the same role in the dreadful Lisa Hartman mini series. It's a star making part!

Nothing beats that tree song with the smudged mobile.

Helen looks like she's singing in her rec room to a bunch of friends. What kind of theater production number is that? Why does the film look so cheap?

R17, I read the book, Anne was deadly boring on the page as well. Christ, she's numbed up to her eyeballs with those damned dolls for page after page after page, while her husband is fucking Neely on the west coast. And she knows he's fucking Neely, but she just can't do a thing about it because of those damned dolls.

The book is deadly boring...

[quote] Why does the film look so cheap?

Because it was, Blanche! It was cheap!

[quote] Helen looks like she's singing in her rec room to a bunch of friends

Friends she has yet to know. And if they are strangers, brother, well so is she!

The actress who took over for drunken Neely at the end. was a Streisand figure in sailor suit. Notice? It was 1966.

She had Streisand's hair but, thankfully, not her nose.

R25 I love in the movie when Neely flat out says to Anne and Lyon during their visit to the nuthouse that as soon as she can she wants to "have that man of your Anne".

Who would we cast in a remake? Viola Davis IS Helen Lawson!

All remakes of this trash have BEEN trash!

[quote]R25 I read the book, Anne was deadly boring on the page as well.

Anne’s involved in more interesting stuff in the book (at least in its first half.)

She dates a multi millionaire (Allen Cooper) out of pity, thinking he’s a deadbeat salesman. Then she has a long, toxic friendship with Helen that blows up in her face.

There was a hit song?

Barbara Parkins couldn't act.

^^ You're being obnoxious! .

The girls I grew up with LOVED this movie. I suppose there weren't that many movies about young career women at the time?

All the male actors are boring, too! Lyon Burke is supposed to have tons of charisma and sex appeal.

Bonnie Franklin is Neely. Linda Lavin is Helen.

Dimwit blonde Georgia Engel as Jennifer.

Can someone with a personality please play Anne?!

Eve Plumb?

NO A-LIST STARS!!!!! NO A-LIST STARS!!! How dare you! I salvaged that effin' trainwreck with my fabulous performance. And almost got my damn head chopped off by that effin' mobile! Meanwhile that horrid bitch Anne Welles, that New England frosted cuntsicle, is sitting in the front row looking like she just got fucked by a dead cat. I'll plant my own tree, all right, right up your.........

The train ride at the beginning is eerily similar to the train ride at the beginning of THAT GIRL.

And That Girl had Ethel Merman (i.e Helen Lawson) on TWICE.

Minnie Da Moochah

And let's not forget Jennifer's lesbian subplot and Tony's proclivity for anal - alas, still too steamy for 1967.

From the book, I mean

“Valley of the Dolls”, the novel, starts slowly but builds. My favorite Susann novel is “Once is Not Enough” which is just insane and has big celebs with tiny dicks, a lesbian in name only, downtown NYC hippie theater scene, Electra complex, a WWII atrocity with raped nuns, and an ambiguous ending where the heroine either commits suicide in the ocean or is kidnapped by aliens. Either answer is appropriate.

R49, your description of "Once is Not Enough"... is that snarkiness or true? especially the ending.

And here's a thought for a new book club for gay men "of a certain age," we should meet and every month (or two weeks - these are quick reads) and discuss every Sidney Sheldon Jackie Collins, Judith Kranz, Jacqueline Susann novel.

Trash, trash and more trash. First read of COURSE is Peyton Place. Then VOTD...

R49, I couldn’t make that up.

Susann even uses that ending as the jumping off point for an unrelated scifi novel entitled “Yargo” that was published posthumously.

I think R49 is meant to be read in the voice of Stefon from SNL.

[quote]R49 My favorite Susann novel is “Once is Not Enough” which is just insane and has big celebs with tiny dicks, a lesbian in name only, downtown NYC hippie theater scene, Electra complex, a WWII atrocity with raped nuns, and an ambiguous ending where the heroine either commits suicide in the ocean or is kidnapped by aliens.

You also get ejaculate harvested for skincare.

Cursed?:

"Some reviewers commented on the fact that the fates of the three main characters sharply reflect the lives of the actresses who played them. Barbara Parkins ultimately would quit Hollywood and move to Europe, just as her character, Anne Welles, quits the show business world and returns to her hometown of Lawrenceville; Patty Duke, like her character Neely O'Hara, suffered from mental health issues throughout her life, which sometimes required hospitalization and drug treatments; and like her character Jennifer North, Sharon Tate died young, a victim of the infamous Charles Manson murders.

In the film, Jennifer, played by Sharon Tate, discovers she has malignant breast cancer. This mirrors what happened to Jacqueline Susann, the author of the novel on which the film is based, who had a mastectomy in 1962. Cancer would ultimately kill Susann in 1974"

[quote]R51 Susann even uses that ending as the jumping off point for an unrelated scifi novel entitled “Yargo” that was published posthumously.

I’ve read YARGO.

The captured heroine is expected to marry a savage, caged prince - half man and half honey bee!

R38, I just couldn’t get over the name “Lyon.”

Jennifer was based on Susann’s one time lover, Carole Landis. Notice there lesbianism is almost all of her novels.

[quote]Cursed?

Travilla, you in danger, gurl.

Carole Landis killed herself when (married) Rex Harrison dumped her. Yet now you're telling me she was a lebsian?

She was a double-gater, r60.

She was not adverse to a little scissor action, it’s true- -

The weird thing was that Barbara Parkins was thought at the time to be the top box office draw (because she was starring in the highly rated "Peyton Place" TV series), so she got top billing even about Patty Duke. She's very pretty but a completely forgettable actress.

[quote]She's very pretty but a completely forgettable actress

But an unforgettable Gillian Girl!

It may have been a hugely popular novel but it had the depth of a penny.

Just about everyone was the, R62. The stories I could tell and never did…

Jacqueline Susann had a spotty acting career before turning to the typewriter. One Broadway musical she did was some forgettable piece of shit called “A Lady Says Yes,” which ran for a few months in 1945.

Carol Landis was also in the cast and this is when the lascivious, lezzie loo affair took place.

A lot of other plot elements in “Valley of the Dolls” align with Susann’s own life. That she’d done some (albeit crappy) musicals let her write believably about the backstage world of Helen Lawson’s show “Hit the Sky!” And Anne becoming the Gillian Girl is a bit like Susann’s role as spokeswoman for machine-made Schiffli lace, which she made commercials for.

Tony Polar is mentally handicapped like Susann’s son was. Neely’s husband is a publicist like Susann’s was.

I always thought it was weird that Jacqueline Susann appeared, as an actress, in an episode of Mannix.

…and yes, I know it’s even weirder that I remember it.

Susann was a bad actress who often got fired.

Jackie on BBC

Carole Landis also had an affair with Kay Francis when they were shooting “Four Jills in a Jeep.”

[quote]Carole Landis also had an affair with Kay Francis

You mean wavishing Kay Fwancis.

Rawvishing Kay Fwancis.

Kay was a gold star lesbian!

R72 How do you know what?

Tea leaves, Rose

R77 Well drop some tea then. This is my first time hearing this

Ted Casablanca is NOT a fag!