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,
Susann Cokal Susann Cokal Susann Cokal is an American author and academic. She is best known for having written the novels "The Kingdom of Little Wounds", "Mirabilis", and "Breath and Bones", along with short stories, literary and pop-culture criticism, and book reviews. "The Kingdom of Little Wounds" won a Printz silver medal from the American Library Association in 2014. Cokal contributed short stories to anthologies and journals including "Prairie Schooner", "Hayden's Ferry Review", "Bellevue Literary Review", "The Cincinnati Review", and Ohio State University's "The Journal". She also contributed essays about contemporary writers to "Critique", "Scandinavian Studies", "Texas Studies in Literature and Language",