Jacqueline Susann

Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American novelist and actress. Her iconic novel, Valley of the Dolls (1966), is one of the best-selling books in publishing history.[1] With her two subsequent works, The Love Machine (1969) and Once Is Not Enough (1973), Susann became the first author to have three novels top The New York Times Best Seller List consecutively.[2]

Jacqueline Susann was born on August 20, 1918, in Philadelphia, a single daughter to a Jewish couple: Robert Susan, a portrait painter, and Rose Jans,[note 1] a public schoolteacher. As a child, Susann was an inattentive but imaginative student,[3] and in the fifth grade scored 140 on an IQ test,[4] the highest in her school.[5] An only child, devoted to her father, Susann was determined to carry on the family name.[6] She decided to be an actress, despite the advice of a teacher, who said, “Jackie should be a writer. She breaks all the rules, but it works.”[7] In 1936, after graduating from West Philadelphia High School, she left for New York to pursue an acting career. Her father told her, “If you’re going to be an actress, be a good actress. Be a people watcher.”[8]

In New York, in 1937, Susann landed a small role in the Broadway company of The Women, the caustic comedy by Clare Boothe which had opened on December 26, 1936, and would run for 657 performances.[9] She subsequently appeared in such Broadway shows as The Girl from Wyoming (1938), My Fair Ladies (1941), Blossom Time (revival, 1943), Jackpot (1944), and A Lady Says Yes (1945), which starred Hollywood siren Carole Landis.[10] Only one of her shows following The Women was a hit: Banjo Eyes (1941), starring Eddie Cantor, ran for 126 performances.[11]

Together with her friend, actress Beatrice Cole, Susann wrote a play called The Temporary Mrs. Smith, a comedy about a one-time movie actress whose former husbands interfere with her scheme to marry a man of wealth.[12] Retitled Lovely Me,[note 2] the play, directed by actress Jessie Royce Landis, and starring Luba Malina and Mischa Auer, opened on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre on December 25, 1946. Said to be an “audience-pleaser,” [13] the play nonetheless closed after just 37 performances.[14] Four years later, Susann and Cole wrote another play, Cock of the Walk, which was to open on Broadway with Oscar-winning actor James Dunn.[15] For reasons which remain unclear,[16] the play was not produced.

In 1970, Susann made a brief return to the stage when she appeared in Blanche Yurka’s off-Broadway revival of Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot. Clive Barnes in the New York Times panned the production; of the cast, he praised only Yurka, but he did mention that “Jacqueline Susann looks a great deal prettier than the publicity stills on her book jackets might lead you to believe.”[17]