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 in the 1967 film adaptation of "Valley") as agent Annie Laurie Williams. The film was not well-reviewed, with "Variety" writing, "None of the storied genius that Susann exhibited in promoting herself along with her books is much in evidence. ... [it is] a movie that broadly captures all of the famed author's flaws but none of her essence." "Scandalous Me" was followed in 2000 by the theatrical film "Isn't She Great", based on a "New Yorker" profile by Michael Korda, with Bette Midler and Nathan Lane. The film was not well-received critically and was a box office bomb, with a