Valley of the Dolls (film) Valley of the Dolls (film) Valley of the Dolls is a 1967 American drama film based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Jacqueline Susann. It was directed by Mark Robson, produced by Robson and David Weisbart, and stars Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate, and Susan Hayward. Three young women meet when they embark on their careers. Neely O'Hara (Duke) is a plucky kid with undeniable talent who sings in a Broadway show, of which legendary actress Helen Lawson (Hayward) is the arrogant star, while Jennifer North (Tate), a beauty with limited talent, is in the chorus.
Naked Came the Stranger year, further spurring the book's popularity. Mike McGrady was convinced that popular American literary culture had become so base—with the best-seller lists dominated by the likes of Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann—that any book could succeed if enough sex was thrown in. To test his theory, in 1966 McGrady recruited a team of "Newsday" colleagues (according to Andreas Schroder, nineteen men and five women) to collaborate on a sexually explicit novel with no literary or social value whatsoever. McGrady co-edited the project with his "Newsday" colleague Harvey Aronson, and among the other collaborators were well-known writers including 1965 Pulitzer Prize