Susann, Jacqueline (1921–1974)

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Susann, Jacqueline (1921–1974)

Popular American author who wrote the bestseller Valley of the Dolls. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1921; died of cancer in New York City on September 21, 1974; daughter of Robert Susann (a portrait painter) and Rose (Jans) Susann (a teacher); educated in Philadelphia public schools; married Irving Mansfield (a press agent and radio-television producer), in 1939; children: one son, Guy (b. 1946).

Selected writings:

Every Night, Josephine! (1963); Valley of the Dolls (1966); The Love Machine (1969); Once Is Not Enough (1973); Dolores (1976); Yargo (1979).

Jacqueline Susann made her mark in the literary world with decidedly un-literary material. Using her show-business background, she drew on her personal relationships and experiences to produce wildly popular novels that were generally reviled by book critics as trashy and one-dimensional. Susann's flair for the dramatic—evinced in both her personal life and her narrative style—overcame the negative reviews to capture the interest of millions of readers. At the time of her death in 1974, her 1966 novel Valley of the Dolls was ranked as the bestselling book of all time by the Guinness Book of Records.

Jacqueline Susann was born on August 20, 1921, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Rose Jans Susann , a teacher, and Robert Susann. As she grew up, Jacqueline developed an especially close relationship to her father, a portrait painter who counted Supreme Court justices and sports figures among his clients. Her academic career was marked by her lackluster performance in Philadelphia's public schools, which may have helped convince her parents to let her try her hand at acting in New York rather than attend college. The young woman had an insatiable desire for fame, and enjoyed moderate success in her 20-year career as a model and actress, appearing in 21 plays and on television in dramatic productions, panel shows, and commercials. However, the closest she came to genuine accolades was being named as television's best-dressed woman several times.

Susann's 1962 diagnosis of breast cancer may have influenced her decision to change careers. After undergoing a mastectomy and chemotherapy and cobalt treatments, she made a pact with God for another ten years of life in which to realize her passionate dream of becoming famous. Aware that her acting career would not provide the fame she sought, Susann turned to writing—a profession she had previously dabbled in by writing the play Lovely Me in 1946. As a preview of her later work, the play was popular even though critics panned it, and concerned the dark side of Hollywood and Broadway. In 1963, she published her first book, Every Night, Josephine!. The book, about her own life as seen through the eyes of her beloved poodle Josephine, originally sold close to 40,000 copies. An ambitious self-promoter, Susann embarked on an unprecedented publicity tour, often appearing with Josephine in matching outfits. She enjoyed publicity, as did her husband of nearly 25 years, Irving Mansfield, who was both a press agent and a producer. The pair's celebrity even found them as the guests of honor at a tea party thrown by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor .

Although the sales for Every Night, Josephine! were significant, the success of Susann's first book would never approach that of her second, Valley of the Dolls, in 1966. The story about rich, beautiful, and self-destructive women was steamy enough to attract attention on its own (some critics called it pornographic), but Susann ensured its visibility by mounting another promotional publicity blitz. Although the critics universally panned the novel, the gossipy, glamorous narrative, combined with the publicity generated on her tour, kept it at the #1 spot on The New York Times bestseller list for a record 28 consecutive weeks. Strong sales made it the all-time bestseller—topping 20 million copies sold by the time of Susann's death in 1974.

Michael Goldberg notes that Valley of the Dolls added something new to the potboiler genre: "Susann combined her inside knowledge of the dark side of show business with her moral outrage against the drugs and alcohol to which she was addicted to produce a curiously compelling hybrid. The titillating story, which centered on the lives of the rich and famous, was at bottom a morality play." Although also referring to pretty girls, "dolls" was Susann's slang term for the pills consumed by the book's main characters. Although Susann insisted that the show-business women in the story were purely fictional creations, many readers drew parallels between the characters and Susann's own associates, including Judy Garland, Ethel Merman , and Susann herself. Naturally, plans for a movie version quickly took hold, and Valley of the Dolls hit America's movie screens the following year. Like the book, the movie—starring Susan Hayward, Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke , and Sharon Tate —was a resounding success, grossing over $70 million. It is now considered a camp classic.

Susann had found her milieu, and produced two more novels in the same vein in the next seven years. In 1969, she released The Love Machine, which also had several self-destructive female characters who revolve around the book's main character, ambitious television tycoon Robin Stone. Like the dual meaning of "dolls," this book's title refers to both Stone—apparently based on Susann's own father—and the television industry. Featuring all the sex and glitz of its predecessor, The Love Machine also picked up Valley's morality as the swinging Stone reforms his abusive ways to settle down with the movie-star heroine. Although the cachet of her name alone could have sold the book, Susann continued her vigorous promotion efforts. She reportedly flew to publicity events in a chartered plane with "The Love Machine" painted on the fuselage. This book, too, enjoyed vast success, staying on the bestseller list for 21 weeks.

The Love Machine was followed in 1973 by Once Is Not Enough, which also proved extremely popular, keeping the #1 spot for nine weeks. Perhaps again drawing on her relationship with her father, Susann featured a female character who cannot emotionally separate from her producer-gambler dad in the midst of a plot brimming with lust, assaults, and melodramatic accidents. Both this and The Love Machine followed in Valley's footsteps by becoming a pricey movie with big box-office returns.

Although needled by negative criticism throughout her writing career, Susann dismissed the derisive assessment of her literary talent. According to People magazine, she once said: "I write for women who read me on the goddamn subways. They want to press their noses against the windows of other people's houses and get a look at parties they'll never be invited to, the dresses they'll never get to wear, the lives they'll never live." The incredible royalties generated by her books funded an equally extravagant lifestyle for Susann and her husband. Dining out every night at New York's best restaurants and living in posh hotel suites, Susann appeared to be at the peak of happiness. However, her success was marred by two secrets she kept from even her closest friends. Susann had given birth to a son, Guy, in 1946, and felt that his autism may have been the result of her drug and alcohol abuse during that time. She and Irving institutionalized the boy when he was still a toddler. Although Susann and Irving consistently visited him, few of their friends even knew the couple had a child, and those who did were led to believe that he was away at boarding school or hospitalized with asthma. Susann was equally reticent about her 12-year struggle with cancer, of which few were aware until it had reached advanced stages in 1974. Susann succumbed to it at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan on September 21, 1974.

Two of Susann's books were published posthumously, Dolores (1976) and Yargo (1979). Dolores, a fictionalized account of John F. Kennedy's assassination, drew some comments for Susann's brash comparisons between herself and Jacqueline Kennedy , the other famous "Jackie" of the day. Yargo, a novel of romance and science fiction, had been written in the 1950s. In 1982, Valley of the Dolls went out of print, but experienced a revival 15 years later along with an increase of interest in Susann herself. Along with plans for a sequel to the film, the end of the 1990s saw Susann's biography, Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann, become a television movie in 1998, starring Michele Lee . In 2000, the movie Isn't She Great, starring Bette Midler as Susann and Nathan Lane as Irving, opened to disappointing reviews and spent only one week in theaters.