Valley of the Dolls the Mount Everest of her dreams, only to find herself back in the valley of the dolls. Susann had apparently been thinking about the novel for some time. Some years earlier, she had begun "Underneath the Pancake", a show business novel, with her actress friend Beatrice Cole (c. 1910–1999). Later, she considered writing a novel about drug usage in show business to be called "The Pink Dolls". "Valley of the Dolls" is considered to be a "roman à clef", with its characters based on famous figures such as Judy Garland, Carole Landis, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman. In 1973, after
Jacqueline Susann that it was one of "mental and spiritual incest." After her death, film critic Andrew Sarris pointed out that "If there is any single key to the oeuvre of Jacqueline Susann it is to be found in an extended Electra complex." As with her previous novels, reviews were negative (a writer for "The New York Times" complained of the book's "nearly 500 steadily monotonous pages"), but sales were spectacular: the book spent 36 weeks on the "New York Times" Best Seller List, eight of which were at #1, and became the second highest-selling novel of 1973. Susann, with this book,