Bette Midler "Isn't She Great" and "Drowning Mona". In Andrew Bergman's "Isn't She Great", a highly fictionalized account of the life and career of author Jacqueline Susann, she played alongside Nathan Lane and Stockard Channing, portraying Susann with her early struggles as an aspiring actress relentlessly hungry for fame, her relationship with press agent Irving Mansfield, her success as the author of "Valley of the Dolls", and her battle with and subsequent death from breast cancer. The dramedy garnered largely negative reviews by critics, who dismissed it as "bland material [that] produces entirely forgettable comic performances." For her performance in the film,
Jacqueline Susann James Dunn. For reasons which remain unclear, the play was not produced. In 1970, Susann made a brief return to the stage when she appeared in Blanche Yurka's off-Broadway revival of Jean Giraudoux's "The Madwoman of Chaillot". Clive Barnes in the "New York Times" panned the production; of the cast, he praised only Yurka, but he did mention that "Jacqueline Susann looks a great deal prettier than the publicity stills on her book jackets might lead you to believe." From 1948 to 1950, Susann appeared on "The Morey Amsterdam Show", a comedy series (telecast first on CBS, then on DuMont),