Beyond the Valley of the Dolls his feet, the start of his recovery from paralysis. An epilogue follows, with a preachy, satirical, voice-over monologue and scenes of Kelly and Harris (now in crutches) hiking on a log over a creek, and a final scene with the courthouse wedding of three couples—Kelly and Harris, Pet and Emerson, and Susan and Baxter—with Porter observing from outside the courthouse window. Cast notes "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" was originally intended as a straightforward sequel to the 1967 film "Valley of the Dolls". Jacqueline Susann, author of the novel "Valley of the Dolls" had come up with the title
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