The Love Machine (novel) The Love Machine (novel) The Love Machine is the second novel by Jacqueline Susann, the follow-up to her enormously successful "Valley of the Dolls" (1966). Published by Simon & Schuster in 1969, the book was a "New York Times" #1 best seller. "The Love Machine" tells the story of ruthless, haunted Robin Stone and his life and career in the cut-throat world of 1960s network television. Handsome but promiscuous, the latter earning his nickname the Love Machine after he describes television with the same sobriquet, Robin is loved beyond all reason by three women: Amanda, the beautiful but doomed fashion
Jacqueline Susann made publishing history as the first writer to have three consecutive number one novels on the "Times" list. The book was filmed in 1975 by Guy Green as "Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough", with Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, Melina Mercouri, Brenda Vaccaro (in an Oscar-nominated performance), and Deborah Raffin as January. The film, executive-produced by Irving Mansfield, was not a critical favorite, but was a commercial success, grossing $15.7 million (the equivalent of $65.2 million in 2016).) Susann's final work was a novella, "Dolores" (Morrow), a "roman a clef" about Jacqueline Kennedy, originally written for the February 1974 issue