Gazing Into the Valley of the Dolls

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

She went to the bathroom and took a red doll. Strangely enough, she felt no panic… each time it would hurt less, and afterword she would love Lyon less, until one day there would be nothing left — no hurt, and no love.

They say once you hike all those miles to reach the summit of fame and success, you can see everything.

You have it all — you’ve beat the impossible odds. Become immortalized and beloved on the screen, the stage, the advertisements. But once you make it to the top and look across the landscape, the vibrant colors you once imagined are revealed to be dreary and unrecognizable.

The years spent slogging through a vaudevillian act as a nobody, the struggle to negotiate a fair contract, the sheer force of will it takes to be recognized in a cutthroat industry that will gleefully throw you to the wolves at the drop of a pin. Climbing up and up and up, tarnished nailbeds a tribute to the white-knuckled grip the summit asks of you.

How lucky to reach the peak of glamour, only to stumble down the marble staircase in your foyer to find your husband naked with another woman in the pool of the home that you share.

“I catch you red-handed and you stand there with your dingle blowing in the breeze and a naked broad in my cabana, and you sermonize with me! Who in the hell is paying for this pool and this house?”

The luckiest woman in the world, the girl who has it all, spinning on liquor and pills, stumbles to the fridge.

“‘Now what? Come on, Neely, you can have anything you want. ‘Cause you’re a star… a big fucking talent… nah… a fucking big talent. And you can have anything.’ She lurched against the refrigerator. ‘Lessee. More caviar? Why not? You bought it.’”

She grabs a jar of caviar from the fridge and takes it to bed where she will sleep alone. Her distress signal — a bottle of pills and a ruby red wrist — will be almost too successful.

Did I make the papers?

The Valley of the Dolls (1966) by Jacqueline Susann

a bleak, melodramatic, campy exploration of three women’s journey through the soulless meat grinder of show business.

vanity, addiction, salacious affairs, wig-snatching, cutthroat competition

FFO: Showgirls, A Star is Born, Sex & the City, Day of the Locust

How much we owe to the modern solutions of colorful, round dolls, to wake, to sleep, to fuck, to eat. How convenient to not be chained to a troubled mind, to not feel anything at all. The stage, the set, the blinking red light of the camera makes you hungry for another red doll. You storm off to your dressing room, because you’re a star, baby, and everyone works on your terms.

It’s a grueling climb to the top. A mink coat can only keep you so warm when you’re alone at the summit, the thin brisk air whipping your hair in all directions. Once you make it up there, all that’s left is the chilling view down, down, down, into the valley of the dolls…

If you liked this post, check out its unwitting predecessor, an essay about teen starlets and the isolating nature of celebrity worship.