If, like me, you’re a slow reader, you’ll know what it is to choose books carefully. How I’d love to be like my university friend who could speed-read a whole whodunnit in the bath, solving the mystery before the water was cold. But because of the snail-pace of my consumption, I often feel obliged to bypass thrillers and doorstop blockbusters. Life is short, after all. So I reach dutifully for literary fiction, relying, like P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, on ‘some improving book’ to inform and entertain me.
But I do occasionally deviate, and one day last summer my neighbour appeared at my door with a fat pink paperback. Considerably more than slightly foxed, this was your authentic, Ambre Solaire-stained beach affair – pages yellowed, spine cracked, corners curled. ‘Have you read Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls?’ she asked, pressing it into my hand. Who could resist the opening?
The temperature hit ninety degrees the day she arrived. New York was steaming – an angry concrete animal caught unawares in an unseasonable hot spell. But she didn’t mind the heat or the littered midway called Times Square. She thought New York was the most exciting city in the world.
Down I went into the book’s 400-odd pages, barely coming up for air till I was done. I found, to my surprise, that besides inducing a gasp on almost every page, plus many guilty laughs at the outrage of it all, this would also qualify as an ‘improving book’.
Valley of the Dolls (1966) is set in America, between 1945 and 1965, in the ruthless milieux of New York showbiz and the Hollywood movie industry, just as television is starting to muscle in on this
Subscribe or sign in to read the full article
The full version of this article is only available to subscribers to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly. To continue reading, please sign in or take out a subscription to the quarterly magazine for yourself or as a gift for a fellow booklover. Both gift givers and gift recipients receive access to the full online archive of articles along with many other benefits, such as preferential prices for all books and goods in our online shop and offers from a number of like-minded organizations. Find out more on our subscriptions page.
Subscribe now or Sign inIf, like me, you’re a slow reader, you’ll know what it is to choose books carefully. How I’d love to be like my university friend who could speed-read a whole whodunnit in the bath, solving the mystery before the water was cold. But because of the snail-pace of my consumption, I often feel obliged to bypass thrillers and doorstop blockbusters. Life is short, after all. So I reach dutifully for literary fiction, relying, like P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, on ‘some improving book’ to inform and entertain me.
But I do occasionally deviate, and one day last summer my neighbour appeared at my door with a fat pink paperback. Considerably more than slightly foxed, this was your authentic, Ambre Solaire-stained beach affair – pages yellowed, spine cracked, corners curled. ‘Have you read Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls?’ she asked, pressing it into my hand. Who could resist the opening?The temperature hit ninety degrees the day she arrived. New York was steaming – an angry concrete animal caught unawares in an unseasonable hot spell. But she didn’t mind the heat or the littered midway called Times Square. She thought New York was the most exciting city in the world.
Down I went into the book’s 400-odd pages, barely coming up for air till I was done. I found, to my surprise, that besides inducing a gasp on almost every page, plus many guilty laughs at the outrage of it all, this would also qualify as an ‘improving book’. Valley of the Dolls (1966) is set in America, between 1945 and 1965, in the ruthless milieux of New York showbiz and the Hollywood movie industry, just as television is starting to muscle in on this crowded scene. I learned more about that world from this one novel than from a whole shelf of non-fiction books that I have on the subject. Not one hits the nerve with such shrieking precision as Valley of the Dolls. Jacqueline Susann worked in television and seems to have been familiar with every cog in the entertainment machine. This, her most famous novel, is the work of a gimlet-eyed insider who, once set free from its confines, tells it how it is. Her book follows three young women as, each in their own way, they seek their fortunes. The first we meet is Anne Welles. Ravishingly beautiful but unaware of her charisma, she has fled to New York to escape a future of stultifying marriage in a small New England town. Anne finds a job at Bellamy and Bellows, a top talent agency and the connecting point between almost everyone in the story. Here the boss, the worldly Henry Bellamy, spots her qualities and takes her under his wing as his assistant. It is often suggested that Anne, whose integrity and dignity serve to prevent the narrative from tumbling into a moral abyss at every turn, may be modelled on Grace Kelly, and each of the three girl protagonists does seem to have the aura of a familiar icon. The second young woman is Jennifer North, a melting, voluptuous beauty reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. Jennifer is dreamy and complex, a statuesque creature on the surface, but ravaged by her secret circumstances. Neely O’Hara, the youngest of the three, is a tough little vaudeville performer who claws her way up from the bottom to be recognized as a genius, not unlike Judy Garland. You might think that the three, all friends, are the ‘dolls’ referred to in the title. Not a bit of it. The ‘dolls’ are the various drugs which, one by one, they come to rely on. They first appear when an insomniac Jennifer downs two Seconals – little red pills prescribed by a star-struck doctor to help her sleep. This incident doesn’t occur till p.211 in the edition I read – that’s how long it takes for these women to be driven to the chemicals that finally dominate their lives. But before that we enjoy the bright lights of the city, the night clubs, the evenings out, the restaurants, fashions, furs and manners of the time. We also gain insight into the intricacies of Bellamy and Bellows’s dealings – surely based on well-researched fact. The agency offers both career and legal representation to its clients. It manages performers ranging from bright newcomers to stars at their zenith, while manoeuvring into the shadows those who may be on their way down or who have failed to match their potential. Gradually, show-biz is revealed as a brilliant and wicked trade, full of tricks and deceptions, an industry that builds artistes up, altering and manipulating them for its own ends: if they don’t make the grade, they are sidelined or deftly dumped. We see managers destroying the young and promising at their jealous stars’ behest, and talent moved around like pawns on a chessboard. For a time the story shifts to Hollywood where Neely is contracted to a big studio. Here, the exploitation is even worse. Looking older than 27 is a crime. The studio head shuts screen goddesses up in gilded cages (with swimming pools) and feeds them amphetamines to keep them slim. He gets rid of them if they are not anorexic (an extra ounce makes them too fat for the camera) or if they develop mental health problems or become overly demanding and cost too much. Thanks to such pressures and her own recklessness, the eager young Neely, who starts off fresh and artless, becomes a scheming monster, facing addiction and a long spell in a mental health institution before her eventual rehabilitation as a thoroughly corrupted star. As for poor Jennifer, I’ll leave you to read the book to find out what happens to her. Valley of the Dolls begins as the Second World War comes to a close, a time when, unlike cities in Europe, New York appears prosperous, glittering and fully functional. The glamorous world of entertainment and fashion has barely been disturbed by the war. Henry’s English colleague Lyon Burke, fresh from fighting, tells Anne how one of his Manhattan dates complained of shortages, especially of nylons: ‘She was a model, and her legs were important to her. She said she was terribly glad we finally discovered the atom bomb – she had been down to her last six pair when it hit.’ How different from London girls who joined the war effort, were bombed out of their houses, lost their teeth to an inadequate diet, and clothed themselves from ration books. While I was reading, I couldn’t help Googling as many reviews and commentaries as I could find. One of the things people say, again and again, is how sexy Valley of the Dolls is. It’s true that at the time of its publication Susann’s account of sexual activity was extraordinarily daring. And yes, there is a lot of sex – occasionally beautiful, but mostly dreary, nasty or absurd. Men are presented in largely unflattering guises – the devastating English charmer Lyon Burke, the millionaire Allen Cooper and his father Gino, the crooner Tony Polar and the businessman Kevin Gillmore – and none of them comes up to scratch. They are unreliable or infantile, demanding or vengeful, needy or perfidious: they love as far as they know how, which is not very far at all. Only Anne has a constant male friend in the avuncular Henry Bellamy who, though no less cut-throat than any other entertainment lawyer, remains loyal to her right to the end – though even he cannot save his heartbroken protégée from swallowing a bitter pill, both literally and figuratively. Another thought that recurs among the commentaries is that Valley of the Dolls stands as a feminist manifesto. It’s true that there’s enough irony and burning indignation in Susann’s storytelling to justify the claim, but however brave her women are, they cannot win freedom. We see the toll taken on Anne, Neely and Jennifer by love, loss, cruelty and bad decisions. Marriage to a man they loved was the dream, but they made unwise marriages. Facelifts, shrinks, sleep cures and self-medication of epic proportions cannot counter their unhappiness. Not astute around men, they allow their independent natures to be compromised, and even Anne, presented as the invincible heroine who will guard her values to the end, is endangered. We encounter jeopardy on every page. The ecstasy of love or stardom or anticipated wealth, dreams of being a more fulfilled wife, a more dutiful daughter or a better mother, are always set against the danger of disintegration. It all sounds horribly tragic, even cynical, but this book is so energetic and perceptive, so knowledgeable and witty, that it is a joy to read. The dialogue is superb; voices leap off the page. Almost sixty years on, it pulls back the curtains on a time and place that feels utterly authentic. And the journey is so alive that it has to represent some kind of hope, and the belief that, one day, women’s spirits will prevail.Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 90 © Sarah Wedderburn 2026
About the contributor
Sarah Wedderburn is a writer and poet. She lives in East Kent.
Leave a comment