Jacqueline Susann restaurant, Susann heard someone shout, "There's the Schiffli girl!" Susann, realizing that 25 years of hard work had culminated only in recognition as the "Schiffli girl," was discouraged." She later appeared in a 1971 episode of the crime drama "Mannix" ("The Crime That Wasn't", airdate January 29, 1971). During the mid-1950s, Susann had written a science-fiction novel called "The Stars Scream" (published posthumously as "Yargo"). In the early 1960s, she considered writing a book about show business and drug use, to be entitled "The Pink Dolls". In 1962, however, after encouragement from showman Billy Rose, husband of Susann friend Joyce
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