Jacqueline Susann of her own books. "Valley of the Dolls" spans twenty years (1945–1965) in the lives of three young women: Anne Welles, the New England beauty who liberates herself from her staid small town by coming to New York, where she falls in love with the dashing Lyon Burke; Neely O'Hara, an ebullient vaudevillian who becomes a Hollywood star and self-destructs; and Jennifer North, a showgirl with little talent but a gorgeous face and figure, who becomes a friend to both. All three women fall prey to the "dolls," amphetamines and barbiturates, a euphemism which Susann coined. The book was published
Jacqueline Susann made publishing history as the first writer to have three consecutive number one novels on the "Times" list. The book was filmed in 1975 by Guy Green as "Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough", with Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, Melina Mercouri, Brenda Vaccaro (in an Oscar-nominated performance), and Deborah Raffin as January. The film, executive-produced by Irving Mansfield, was not a critical favorite, but was a commercial success, grossing $15.7 million (the equivalent of $65.2 million in 2016).) Susann's final work was a novella, "Dolores" (Morrow), a "roman a clef" about Jacqueline Kennedy, originally written for the February 1974 issue