Popular novelist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. After a moderately successful career as an actress she turned to writing. Her first novel, Valley of the Dolls (1968), became an immediate best seller, as did The Love Machine (1969).
Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – September 21, 1974, New York) was an American author known for her mass-appeal novels. Her most notable book was Valley of the Dolls, a book that broke sales records and spawned a movie and a TV series.
Early years
At school, Susann was a lazy student, but she scored a 140 on a fifth-grade IQ test. Writing was always something she was praised for, but Susann was determined to become an actress.
Arriving in New York City she got bit parts in movies, plays (such as The Women), and commercials. A year later, Susann landed a decent theatrical job playing a lingerie model, earning $25.00 a week.
After marrying Irving Mansfield, a press agent on April 2, 1939, she began to get better jobs.
In 1955, she acquired her poodle Josephine and a contract to be the fashion commentator for Schiffli Lace on Night Time, New York which ran 1-7 a.m. weeknights.
Middle Years
She tried writing a show business/drug exposé that she was going to call The Pink Dolls, but instead she wrote her first successful book, Every Night, Josephine! which was based on her experiences with her poodle, whom she sometimes dressed up in outfits to match her own. Although the book was widely viewed as a novelty, it sold well enough for her to publish her second book, Valley of the Dolls.
The book was an instant smash, and broke many sales records (at around 19 million copies, it has been cited as the best-selling novel ever.) The book also served as a cultural touchstone; though some people considered Susann's writing style to be loud, bombastic and brash (an assessment Susann herself would have agreed with) and the subject matter inappropriate, the mixture of soap-opera style storytelling with bold, non-traditional characters - a model, a singer and a bombshell actress - reaped huge sales. Susann went on to publish several more novels, all in a similar vein to "Dolls". Truman Capote - himself a talk show fixture and controversial figure - created a media malestrom when he appeared on The Tonight Show and told Johnny Carson that Susann looked like "a truck driver in drag" and then went on to apologize to truck drivers. (She was not amused.)
Final Chapter
Susann experienced several health battles throughout her life, including recurring bouts with breast cancer. Like her other books, it was a roaring success, but she was too sick and drained by chemotherapy to tour in support of the book.
Susann's health failed rapidly.
In the late 1970s, her romance/science fiction novel Yargo was published posthumously. Written in the late 1950s, the novel is not similar to her other works and was a radical and somewhat bizarre departure, likely published only due to the sustained interest in Susann.
In 1996, a biography of Susann (the source for the citations of this article) was published: Lovely Me by Barbara Seaman. Marlo Thomas played Susann in a play Paper Doll with F. Michele Lee and Peter Riegert played the couple in the TV movie Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story.
Her last novel Dolores, a thinly-veiled take on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was published in 1976. When her books were coming out, Susann would rise at dawn to take coffee and doughnuts to the truck drivers who were delivering her books. Susann's shrewdness ensured her book would be prominently displayed and enthusiastically recommended by booksellers. Susann also made a point of appearing regularly on TV talk shows, and even game shows, to promote her latest book. Susann never talked about her illness. After her death, Susann was cremated and her ashes placed in a special container styled like a hardcover book, with "Jacqueline Susann 1918-1974" stamped on the front-cover side. Soap writer Robert Soderbergh has cited Susann as being the basis for the character Felicia Gallant on the soap opera Another World.
Star Trek IV film reference
Susann's fame led to the following exchange in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Kirk: The complete works of Jacqueline Susann; (1963) ISBN 0-14-303434-0 Valley of the Dolls: A Novel (1966) ISBN 0-8021-3519-6 The Love Machine (1969) ISBN 0-8021-3544-7 Once Is Not Enough (1973) ISBN 0-8021-3545-5 Dolores (1976) ISBN 0-553-20958-2
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