Valley of the Dolls The screenplay was written by Helen Deutsch ("National Velvet") and Dorothy Kingsley ("Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), and produced by Robson and David Weisbart. Reviews were scathing, but the film was an enormous box-office hit, becoming the sixth most popular of the year with $44 million at the domestic box office. Susann, who had a cameo as a news reporter, hated the film, reportedly telling director Robson that it was "a piece of shit." The novel was adapted for television in 1981 as "Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls", a mini-series executive-produced by Susann's widower Irving Mansfield and directed by
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",