Stephen Rebello has written two of my favourite books about movies. And now he's written a third, equally informative and deliciously enjoyable, combining elements of the first two.
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Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is a superb, well researched and detailed history of the production of one of the Master of Suspense's best films. And Bad Movies We Love, written with Edward Marguiles, is a hilarious, affectionate guide to hundreds of so-bad-they're-fun films.
One of those films, as you might have guessed, is the 1967 adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's hugely successful 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls. And Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! delves into the literary, cinematic and cultural history of the phenomenon. Despite the odd production shortcoming - no notes, occasional slipshod copy editing - this is a really good book about, as Rebello says, a beloved bad book and movie.
Susann had a huge desire to be famous and started as a not terribly successful stage actress and playwright. She picked up lots of showbiz gossip and also created some, notably from an intense relationship with Broadway musical star Ethel Merman that turned sour. All this provided later inspiration.
Susann, helped by her press-agent husband Irving Mansfield, found success in the literary world. Her first book, written when she was 45, arose out of letters she wrote to friends detailing the adventures of her poodle, Josephine. The result, Every Night, Josephine! took a while to find a publisher, sending Susann into therapy and popping "dolls" like Valium and Benzedrine.
The 1963 book eventually became a hit, helped by Susann and Mansfield's shrewd and relentless publicity work.
Then came Valley of the Dolls, which became an even bigger success, commercially if not critically. The book, with its sex and drug-filled story of women trying to make it in New York and Hollywood, would sell more than 30 million copies. One element that piqued the public's interest was the resemblance of its characters to real-life celebrities like Merman. And again, Susann was a canny and tireless self-promoter.
All this makes for juicy enough reading - and provides insights into celebrity culture in the pre-digital era - but things really heat up after Hollywood, inevitably, comes calling and the screen rights are sold to 20th Century Fox. It was obvious screen fare, especially since the "adventures of women in the big city" concept was behind many films including The Best of Everything and How to Marry of a Millionaire.
Rebello details the process of adapting the book for the screen, casting, preproduction, shooting and the movie's release and reception. We get a lot of fascinating, sometimes eye-opening, detail about all this and also about the studio politics of the time, with father and son moguls Darryl and Richard Zanuck wrestling for power.
While many actors were considered for the film, the three central women, Anne, Neeley and Jennifer, were eventually played, respectively, by Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate. The studio took a gamble, casting increasingly unreliable Judy Garland as the Mermanesque Helen Lawson: she proved too erratic and was replaced by Susan Hayward. There's a lot of delightful gossip, with the stars sniping at one another and parading their own egos and insecurities. The horrific death of Sharon Tate - one of the victims of Charles Manson's followers in 1969 - might have coloured people's thinking but it seems nobody had a bad word to say about her personally.
Parkins and Duke attract more mixed feelings but nobody seems to have thought highly of director Mark Robson. The one-time editor, who had directed another sin-sational literary adaptation, Peyton Place (1957), does not come off well. Robson wasn't a very sensitive handler of actors, being more concerned with the stopwatch he used to time scenes than any nuances of performance.
VD (as it was nicknamed) did have some top talent involved, including composer John Williams (well before Jaws) and songwriting husband and wife Andre and Dory Previn. The numbers they came up with range from the near-sublime (Theme from) Valley of the Dolls to the ridiculous I'll Plant My Own Tree.
Valley of the Dolls became a camp cult classic like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of those films where at some screenings audience members dressed up and chanted along with lines like, "Ted Casablanca is NOT a fag ... and I'm the dame who can prove it!"
Susann would have other commercial, but not critical, successes before she died in 1974 with books like The Love Machine and Once Is Not Enough but none had the impact of Valley of the Dolls which influenced Jackie Collins, Sex and the City and more. Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! is a must-read for fans of Susann, fans of movies, and fans of pop culture.
