Jacqueline Susann sold. By 2016, the book had sold more than 31 million copies. In 1967, the book was adapted into the film of the same name, starring Barbara Parkins as Anne, Patty Duke as Neely, Sharon Tate as Jennifer, and Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson, the aging Broadway legend. Susann made a cameo appearance as a reporter at the scene of Jennifer North's suicide. "Valley of the Dolls" received scathing reviews, but was a widespread commercial success, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of its year with $44.4 million at the domestic box office, a huge amount for its time. Susann herself
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