Irving Mansfield Mansfield gave up his career to help his wife promote her book, "Valley of the Dolls", which was published in 1966 and became the best-selling novel of the year. Mansfield continued to work with his wife in promoting her subsequent novels, "The Love Machine" (1969) and "Once Is Not Enough" (1973), both among the top three sellers of their respective years. Mansfield also executive-produced movie versions of his wife's novels "The Love Machine" (1971) and "Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough" (1975), as well as a 1981 television mini-series version of "Valley". Mansfield met Jacqueline Susann, then an aspiring stage
Valley of the Dolls publication of her third novel, Susann said, "They can keep calling it that ["roman à clef"]. It'll only make my books sell. I don't care." Susann insisted that she began each book with a theme: "Then I start asking, what kind of a personality? And because I have a good ear, I unconsciously pick up certain people." Susann dedicated the book to her poodle Josephine, and to her husband Irving Mansfield. The book was published by Bernard Geis Associates on February 10, 1966, and "took off like a Cape Canaveral space shot." Although "Publishers Weekly", in an advance review, called