Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American author known for her best-selling novels. Her most notable work was Valley of the Dolls, a book that broke sales records and spawned an Oscar-nominated 1967 film and a short-lived TV series.
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Jacqueline Susann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Robert Susann, a portrait painter, and Rose Jans, a schoolteacher. In school, Susann was an intelligent but lazy student. She scored the highest on her class's IQ test, a 140, prompting her mother to predict that she would someday become a good writer. Susann had other ideas and instead had aspirations of being an actress. Susann's rocky relationship with her hard-to-please mother, as well as her starry-eyed view of her roguish father, would later be woven into her novels.
By the time Susann entered high school, she was dabbling in drugs and had earned the reputation of being a party girl. Although her parents hoped she would enter college, Susann left for New York City after graduating from West Philadelphia High School in 1936 to pursue an acting career.
Arriving in New York City, Susann landed bit parts in movies, plays (such as The Women), and commercials. A year later, she landed a decent theatrical job playing a lingerie model, earning $25.00 a week. While in New York City, Susann met a press agent, Irving Mansfield (né Mandelbaum). The two dated despite the fact that Susann was not sexually attracted to Mansfield. In turn, Mansfield wooed Susann by placing items and photos of her in theater and society sections of New York newspapers. The ploy worked, and the couple married on April 2, 1939, at Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia.
After the wedding, Mansfield went on to manage Susann's career. Mansfield made sure Susann was placed in news columns, and she soon was a regular on The Morey Amsterdam Show. She then got a spot in the Broadway show A Lady Says Yes, starring Carole Landis and Jack Albertson. The following year, Susann wrote her first play, Lovely Me, for production on Broadway. It closed after only 37 performances.
Despite Mansfield's devotion to Susann, rumors of her infidelities surfaced throughout their marriage. One of Susann's first affairs was with actor/comedian/singer Eddie Cantor. Cantor hired Susann for a role in the touring production of the play, Banjo Eyes. Cantor dumped Susann after his wife discovered the affair and demanded that he quit the play. In 1942, Susann met comedian Joe E. Lewis and the two began an affair. Susann fell hard for Lewis which prompted her to write Mansfield a "Dear John" letter shortly after he was drafted by the United States Army in 1943. When Lewis learned that Susann and Mansfield separated and that Susann intended for her and Lewis to marry, he applied for a USO position, and was sent to New Guinea.
In late 1944, Mansfield and Susann got back together, and in 1946, the couple had a son whom they named Guy. At age three, Guy was diagnosed as autistic. The following year, Guy was committed to an institution where he remains to this day. Mansfield and Susann told no one of their son's true condition. The couple told friends that Guy was asthmatic, and placed in a school in Arizona for the healthy climate. For the rest of her life, Susann was tormented with guilt over institutionalizing her son.
For decades, rumors have persisted that Susann was bisexual. The rumors began around 1945 when Susann appeared in A Lady Says Yes, with Carole Landis. The two reportedly had an affair and some claim that Susann modeled the Jennifer North character in her novel Valley of the Dolls after Landis. According to Susann's biographer, the affair had begun when Landis bought her earrings and a fur coat, Susann later describing to her female friends how "sensual it had been when she and Carole had stroked and kissed each other's breasts". However, in 1945, Landis married her third husband, Broadway producer W. Horace Schmidlapp, to whom Susann had introduced her. There are also reports that Susann had an affair with the fashion designer Coco Chanel in 1959, and she repeatedly attempted to start a physical relationship with the Broadway stage and film actress Ethel Merman. These allegations have not been confirmed, and most of Susann's friends and colleagues dismiss them.
In 1951, Susann hosted a talk show on the DuMont Television Network called Jacqueline Susann's Open Door but the show lasted less than two months.
In 1955, Susann acquired her poodle Josephine, and a contract to be the fashion commentator for "Schiffli Lace" on the Night Time, New York program. Susann wrote, starred in, and produced two live commercials every night. She continued to be the "Schiffli Girl" until 1961.
In the early 1960s, Susann tried writing a show business and illegal drug exposé that she intended to call The Pink Dolls. However, she changed her mind and wrote her first successful book, Every Night, Josephine!, which was based on her experiences with her poodle. She sometimes dressed the dog in outfits to match her own. Although this book was widely viewed as a novelty, it sold well enough for her to write and publish her second book, the novel Valley of the Dolls.
Around that time, Susann developed breast cancer. She had a mastectomy on December 27, 1962, but she kept the cancer a secret. Despite her illness, Susann had determined that she would become a bestselling author, and she began writing her first novel, Valley of the Dolls.
Valley of the Dolls became the number one best-selling novel in the United States for many weeks. Next, she followed up this great success with her best-selling follow-up novels, The Love Machine, published in 1969, and Once Is Not Enough, published in 1973, the year before her death.
Valley of the Dolls was initially rejected by some publishers; however, Susann persisted, and when the novel was published on February 10, 1966, it was an immediate hit. The subject matter was considered inappropriate by many people in the general public at that time, and it was a mixture of soap-opera style story-telling with bold, non-traditional characters. The story was a roman á clef of sorts, with characters in the novel reportedly based on real-life celebrities such as Judy Garland and Ethel Merman.
Valley of the Dolls broke some sales records with approximately 30 million copies sold as a novel. As popular as Valley of the Dolls was, many contemporary authors dismissed Susann's writing talents. The novelist Gore Vidal said, "She doesn't write, she types!" Critics attacked her by saying Susann, "typed on a cash register." Susann responded to literary critics by saying, "As a writer no one's gonna tell me how to write. I'm gonna write the way I wanna write!" Part of this novel's success stemmed from Susann and Mansfield's tireless effort to promote it. The couple traveled worldwide (especially where English is the predominant language) promoting the novel and her following novels on talk shows and in hundreds of bookstores. Wherever Susann went on her cross-country tours, she signed each copy of her book that was available. She wrote down the name and address of every person she met and reportedly, later on sent thank-you cards to everyone.
In 1967, the book was adapted into the film of the same name starring Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, and Sharon Tate. Susann made a cameo appearance in the film as a reporter at the scene of Jennifer North's suicide. Valley of the Dolls was a widespread commercial hit, but the film was largely panned by film critics. Audiences laughed at some of the dramatic scenes. Susann herself hated the film, and walked out of its premiere.
In 1956, Susann became a panelist on an NBC summer series, This Is Show Business (formerly a regular program on CBS). The later episodes were produced by her former husband Irving Mansfield.
Susann and Mansfield enjoyed the fame that her books garnered. Susann went on to publish several more novels, all in a similar vein to Valley of the Dolls. She also made frequent appearances on television, particularly as a guest on talk shows. Her pointed repartee added spice to the programs on which she was featured.
However, not everyone was a fan. On July 24, 1969, author Truman Capote, himself a talk show regular and a controversial figure, created a media storm when he appeared on The Tonight Show. Capote stated that Susann looked like "a truck driver in drag." Susann threatened to sue Capote and NBC-TV over that and other comments. In turn, Capote apologized "to truck drivers everywhere." Johnny Carson gave Susann the chance to fire back at Capote, and Carson asked her on the air, "What do you think of Truman?" Susann quipped, "Truman...Truman," "I think history will prove he's one of the best Presidents we've had."
After suffering from a persistently bad cough as well as breathing problems for quite some time, Susann checked into Doctors Hospital on January 11, 1973, hoping to resolve the cough before her upcoming book tour which was to begin in March. Susann remained there five days while tests were being run. X-Rays revealed a nodular lesion in the right lung area. She was transferred to Mount Sinai, a larger hospital with more extensive facilities, for a bronchoscopy and biopsy. On January 18 Susann was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, though there was evidently some debate among the doctors about whether it was an original and separate lung cancer, requiring perhaps more surgery but fewer chemicals. Susann was given only months to live yet persisted to go on a book tour for Once Is Not Enough. Like her other books, it was a success, in this case being the second best-selling novel of 1973 in the United States.
When she was admitted to the hospital for the last time, she remained in a coma for seven weeks before dying at the age of 56. Her last words to Mansfield were, "Hiya, doll. Let's get the hell outta here."
In the late 1970s, Susann's romance/science fiction novel Yargo was published. Written in the late 1950s, the novel is a radical and somewhat bizarre departure from her later works. It is likely that it was only published due to the continuing interest in Susann's writings. Those who knew Susann noticed a strong physical resemblance between Yargo and the actor Yul Brynner, on whom Susann had had a crush in her youth.
Susann's last novel, Dolores, is a thinly-veiled presentation on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy. It was published in 1976. A condensed version of the novel was published in the Ladies' Home Journal, under the title "Jackie by Jackie." When her severe illness prevented Susann from completing Dolores, her close friend and fellow writer Rex Reed anonymously took over.
In 1987, a biography of Susann by Barbara Seaman, Lovely Me, was published. The book was, in part, the basis for the year 2000 movie, Isn't She Great?, which stars Bette Midler as Jacqueline Susann and Nathan Lane as Irving Mansfield. Marlo Thomas played Susann in the play, Paper Doll, which also starred F. Murray Abraham as Mansfield. Michele Lee and Peter Riegert played Susann and Mansfield in the made-for-TV movie, Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story.
Before her death, Susann had planned a direct sequel to Valley of the Dolls. In 2001, author Rae Lawrence wrote the novel Shadow of the Dolls, which was based on the notes that Susann left for her intended sequel.
The movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was never intended to be a sequel to the movie Valley of the Dolls, but rather to be a somewhat independent work, but also a spoof of Valley of the Dolls.
Jacqueline Susann
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