And if you've never read Valley of the Dolls, no matter. Long a devoted “Valley” girl herself, Rae has re-imagined the original characters in a contemporary reality (and adjusted their ages just a bit), exactly as Jackie would have wanted her to. In Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls, Rae Lawrence - herself a bestselling author - picks up the story in the late '80s and brings it right into the new century. Now, after nearly thirty years, the perfect writer has been found to turn Susann's deliciously ambitious ideas into a novel that matches the original shock for shock and thrill for thrill. It remains the quintessential big, blockbuster, must-read, can't-put-down bestseller.īefore her death in 1974, Susann spent many months working on a draft for a sequel that continued the stories of Anne Welles, Neely O'Hara, and Lyon Burke. It shot to the top of the bestseller lists in 1966 and made Jacqueline Susann a superstar. I couldn't tell them apart.Valley of the Dolls was sexy, shocking, and unrelenting in its revelations of the dangers facing women who dare to chase their most glamorous dreams. Sharon Tate remains a wonder to behold, but after her bust exercises I am afraid I will be unable to take her any more seriously as a sex symbol than Raquel Welch.Īs for the young men in the cast: They all apparently go to the same barber and tailor, and their mothers must all have been frightened by Robert Cummings. Both are quite attractive and capable actresses, and Miss Duke is particularly effective in her first musical number. I don't understand how Patty Duke and Barbara Parkins got themselves into this movie. Mark Twain once explained why women were such poor cussers: They know the words, but not the music. There is also a lot of fairly mild vulgar language, shoveled into the script so ineptly that we can tell the scriptwriters (two women) must not swear much. That this cliché should be thought still serviceable in 1967 is a sad commentary. Miss Duke gulps and blinks her eyes and the handsome young man is cool and suave, and as she leaves she drops her purse.īoth of them stoop to pick up the contents, and as their eyes meet from a distance of six inches she says she's afraid she has made a bad impression and he says he's enchanted, or something. Having preserved an example of vulgarity, we should also preserve a classic soap-opera cliché. Side by side with this exhibit should go the one in which Neely O'Hara ( Patty Duke) meets the handsome young man in the lawyer's office.
The scene in which Sharon Tate does her bust exercises, and most particularly the dialog at the end of that scene, should be preserved in permanent form so future historians can see that Hollywood was not only capable of vulgarity, but was also capable of the most offensive and appalling vulgarity ever thrown up by any civilization. Some moments persist in the memory, however.
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