Valley of the Dolls
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"When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top." |
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Valley of the Dolls is a 1966 novel by Jacqueline Susann. It follows the lives of three women (Anne Welles, Neely O'Hara, and Jennifer North) from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. They start out as roommates in New York, and each of them achieves fame and fortune, with plenty of ups and downs along the way.
"Dolls" is a slang term for pills (particularly sleeping pills and weight loss pills). Almost everyone in the book pops them like candy.
This novel provides examples of:
- Acceptable Targets: Fat women.
- All Love Is Unrequited
- Better to Die Than Be Killed: Jennifer commits suicide when she finds out that she has cancer and needs a mastectomy.
- Casting Couch
- Downer Ending
- Golden Age of Hollywood
- Happily Failed Suicide: Neely, three times.
- May December Romance: Anne and Kevin Gillmore.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Quite a few. Susann spent the 1940s as a struggling actress, and drew on that experience while writing the book.
- Neely O'Hara is Judy Garland. Her time in the sanitarium is based on the experiences of Frances Farmer.
- Helen Lawson is Ethel Merman.
- Jennifer North is Carole Landis with a dash of Marilyn Monroe.
- Tony Polar was inspired by Dean Martin, but isn't supposed to actually be him.
- Stepford Smiler: Anne.