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 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