Like many box office hits of its era (or any era, really), Valley of the Dolls was based on a wildly popular novel, in this case one by Jacqueline Susann, a former beauty pageant winner who had scored some minor acting roles in Hollywood films in the 1930s and ’40s before marrying a press agent, which gave her the perfect vantage point from which to view the American entertainment machine in all its glorious complexity, corruption, and debauchery. It was her second novel (her first was a pet memoir based on the life of her poodle), and it became an instant sensation and cultural touchstone, aided and abetted by Susann’s canny ability to market herself and her work (it also helped that many of the characters were thin stand-ins for well-known celebrities like Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, and Marilyn Monroe, which gave it the nasty allure of a true behind-the-scenes exposé).

The book had been simmering inside Susann for years, and it poured out on the page like a fever dream of success and scandal, fueled by bitchy backstabbing, tawdry sexual escapades, and drug addiction (the “dolls” of the title is the nickname Susann gave to the copious and addictive uppers and downers consumed by her characters to pep them up all day and then help them sleep at night, a bit of creative slang that never caught on despite the book and movie’s immense popularity). It is clear that the movie meant to capture as much of the intensity of the novel as possible, albeit within the strictures of what was left of the Production Code (not surprisingly, a character’s experimentation with lesbianism and another’s penchant for anal sex were immediately cut out). For that and other reasons, Susann was never happy with the film adaptation, although she quickly learned to keep her opinions to herself since she benefited so much from its success.

Director Mark Robson was a veteran who began his career in the 1940s helming a number of superior, low-key horror films for producer Val Lewton, but he was most likely hired for his successful 1957 adaptation of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place, a controversial sudser about small-town debauchery. He gives the film a thin veneer of respectability, but mostly stands by while it descends into absurdity. He punches things up with a few laughably dated montages that involve camera tricks like split-screen and overlapping imagery; they are as clunky and artificial as the various sets, which despite being shot in CinemaScope have the feel of a cramped television studio.

The story follows the rising and falling fortunes of three young women who are all trying to make it in the world of entertainment: “Good girl” Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins), who arrives in gray, blustery New York City from quaint New England with dreams of becoming an actress, although she settles for a secretarial position at a powerful law firm; Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke), a talented singer who is trying to break through to Broadway stardom; and Jennifer North (Sharon Tate), a sweet, but largely talentless actress who is appreciated only for her physical attributes. The film takes place over several years in the mid-1960s, which is a change from the novel’s much larger canvas that covered two decades between 1945 and 1965. The compression allows veteran screenwriters Helen Deutsch (National Velvet) and Dorothy Kingsley (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) to create a sense of rush in the characters’ ups and downs, which gives the film an even more hysterical sensibility; it is as if the narrative itself is popping the red amphetamine pills, rushing hectically from one major plot development to the next without even the passage of years to soften the blows.

There are moments of great fortune, such as when Anne is “discovered” by one of her boss’s clients and becomes an instant star as the face of a new line of make-up and beauty products, but there are more often misfortunes, which including Jennifer’s beloved husband Tony (Tony Scotti), a lounge singer and actor, developing a rare, degenerative disease. Anne’s misfortunes are limited primarily to the romantic department, as her boyfriend Lyon Burke (Paul Burke), a press agent and aspiring novelist, refuses to marry her and she winds up with Kevin Gillmore (Charles Drake), the man who made her famous. The majority of the misfortune, however, is heaped on Neely, perhaps because she is the most ambitious and relentless of the three women, climbing her way to the top with such intensity that she is destined for destruction, which comes in the form of both drug and alcohol addiction and a series of doomed relationships that she kills with her ambition and self-destructive behavior.

Patty Duke had won an Oscar for her portrayal of a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), but at the time was best known for her squeaky-clean sitcom The Patty Duke Show (1963–1966). She was desperate to break into adult roles, and her performance as Neely is by far the film’s worst (and, as a result, most entertaining). Duke sinks her teeth into the role and chews the scenery as Neely descends further and further into drug-fueled anger, paranoia, and all-around hatefulness. She sneers, she yells, she growls, she pops pills and swigs booze straight from the bottle, and virtually none of it is believable. She has one moment near the end, when she is about to hit rock bottom, that works; just as she steps out of a door, she turns to one of the other characters and says in a voice that is genuinely pathetic even as it continues to be defiant, “They love me.” The adulation she sought and won came at such a price that the very idea of being loved is contaminated, which is perhaps why the film has to find an upbeat ending (quite different from the novel) with a character shedding the entertainment industry entirely and walking off in truly independent fashion. In its own hysterical way, the movie confirms our worst suspicions about celebrity, fulfilling our guilty desire to watch dressing-room catfights and the discovery of late-night pool trysts while also wagging its finger about how awful it all is. Valley of the Dolls is definitely terrible, but it succeeds quite impressively in having its cake and eating it, too.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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