Jacqueline Susann Jacqueline Susann Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American writer and actress. Her first novel, "Valley of the Dolls" (1966), is one of the best-selling books in publishing history. With her two subsequent works, "The Love Machine" (1969) and "Once Is Not Enough" (1973), Susann became the first author to have three consecutive #1 novels on "The New York Times" Best Seller List. Jacqueline Susann was born on August 20, 1918, in Philadelphia, a single daughter to a Jewish couple: Robert Susan (1887–1957), a portrait painter, and Rose Jans (1892–1981), a public schoolteacher. As a
Naked Came the Stranger year, further spurring the book's popularity. Mike McGrady was convinced that popular American literary culture had become so base—with the best-seller lists dominated by the likes of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann—that any book could succeed if enough sex was thrown in. To test his theory, in 1966 McGrady recruited a team of "Newsday" colleagues (according to Andreas Schroder, nineteen men and five women) to collaborate on a sexually explicit novel with no literary or social value whatsoever. McGrady co-edited the project with his "Newsday" colleague Harvey Aronson, and among the other collaborators were well-known writers including 1965 Pulitzer Prize