Writers Who Inspire Us: The Brazen and Confident Jacqueline Susann
“Never let anyone shame you into doing anything you don't choose to do. Keep your identity.” -— Jacqueline Susann
In the sixties a revolution was happening, it was a ripple that became a tidal wave rushing over society. Equality was the word on everyone’s lips whether they agreed with it or not. Sit-Ins were happening across the country. Many black Americans were striving to be treated as equals and standing up for their basic human rights. The first birth control pill had been approved for use by the federal government. Women were entering the workforce and pushing for equal pay. It was a time of change. There was one woman who would leave her mark on this generation in a way that garnered criticism just as much as praise. She did it all with a pen and paper.
Jacqueline Susann was first brought to my attention by all things Bette Midler’s performance of her in “Isn’t She Great”. She was controversial, sassy and smart. I would come to find that this was an accurate depiction of Susann. She became the bright stain on literature that diehards loathed and everyday people couldn’t get enough of. But Jacqueline Susann didn’t start out with this attitude.
A failed actress, with an unemployed husband and her autistic son in an expensive psychiatric hospital. Susann had a lump in her breast at the age of 44 and not much to be happy about. “This is a sad Christmas,” wrote Susann who was known for keeping a diary. This started when she was given a leather diary by her grandmother on her 7th birthday day. Her grandmother inscribed it saying “Sometimes you might feel sorry for yourself.” “And when you do put it in your diary and don’t breathe a word.” And that is exactly what she did that December morning as she sat writing her thoughts. “I can’t die without leaving something-something big.” “I think I can write.” “Let me live to make it.”
It began after a full mastectomy was performed the day after Christmas. Susann depressed and considering suicide made a deal with God under a tree in centeral park that she’d get ten more years and become the most famous author in the world.
Susann began work on her first novel The Valley Of The Dolls. During this time the boldness of the story shocked and received harsh criticism from the highbrow literary culture. Turman Capote even went as far as to announce on The Tonight Show in July 1969 that Susann looked “like a truck driver in drag”. She wrote about the not so pretty side of show business, blatantly talking about sex and drugs. Even having one of her characters in The Valley Of The Dolls consider suicide (which might have been taken from Susann’s own experience) a subject that was just as scandalous to write about.
In an interview with Roger Ebert in July 1967, Susann talked about a review she got for her novel:
"You wanna hear a funny story?" Jacqueline Susann said. "When 'Valley of the Dolls' came out in Russia, it was reviewed in Pravda. "So somebody sent us the review and we had it translated. They said it was a very exotic story."
"So then tell about Nureyev," said Irving Mansfield, her husband.
"I'm getting to that. So we sent the review to Rudolf Nureyev and he said the translator had made one mistake. Instead of exotic, Pravda said it was neurotic. Isn't that darling?"
"Not neurotic, dear," said Irving. "They said it was erotic. Remember?"
"Neurotic, erotic," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
"It's a great best seller in 12 languages," Irving said.
"Already 3 1/2 million copies in paperback," said Miss Susann. "We'll even pass Dr. Spock."
In this interview Susann shows her exuberant personality. She knew what her book was and reveled in it. She freely admitted she wasn’t a great writer but said she could “tell a helluva story” . That’s what she did, she told a helluva story and along the way became the first author to have 3 New York Times Bestsellers in a row. She also showed her talent for marketing. Her novel “Valley Of The Dolls” sold 29 million copies. Pioneering the extensive book tour and color testing book jackets for tv appearances. Jacqueline Susann changed the book promotion and marketing industry, taking the power to market and give it to authors with the skills and smarts to promote their own work on tv. She single handley invented “Brand Name”, novels that do not rely on reviews, only an announcement that the author’s latest work is available in stores.
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Susann was proud of her work. This was backed up by her editor Don Preston:
She presented her editor, Don Preston, with an eighteen-karat gold money clip, bearing a pair of tiny gold scissors, which came wrapped in a note thanking him for “the kindest cuts of all.” Yet Preston recalls: “When Jackie really liked a phrase she wouldn’t change it. We went back and forth on the opening where she calls New York an ‘angry concrete animal.’ It stayed in.” Neither would she give way on the title although the book distributors hated it, arguing that bookstore personnel might put the book in the children’s section.”
Jacqueline Susann was a force to be reckoned with and she proved it. She was brassy, sassy and proud. She was also a wife and a mother and woman living with a terminal illness. She never let the toll her cancer took on her show. Sadly, Susann would lose her battle with cancer on September 21, 1974. Her parting words to her husband Irving Mansfield being “Hey doll, let’s get the hell out of here.” Susann got her 10 years plus 2 more.
If that isn’t an inspiration I don’t know what is.
Recommended reading
Yargo, Susann's romantic science fiction novel written during the 1950s, was published in February 1979 as a paperback original by Bantam Books. The novel is a radical departure from the works which made her famous.Yargo tells the story of Janet Cooper, a young woman from Avalon, New Jersey, who is abducted by aliens from the planet Yargo. During her interplanetary adventures with these intelligent but emotionless extraterrestrials, she falls in love with their leader.
The Love Machine, is the story of Robin Stone, a ruthless but tormented executive in the cut-throat world of 1960s network television, and three women who love him: Amanda, the doomed fashion model; Maggie, the independent television personality turned movie actress; and Judith, the insecure wife of the network founder.
Once Is Not Enough is the story of January Wayne, daughter of a famous film and stage producer, who is hospitalized in Switzerland for three years. When she returns home to New York City, she finds that the world is far different from the one she had left. January contends with the social upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s in a graphic, driving story. Susann was candid about the theme of the book, stating that it was one of "mental and spiritual incest."
Valley of the Dolls spans twenty years (1945–1965) in the lives of three young women: Anne Welles, the New England beauty who liberates herself from her staid small town by coming to New York, where she falls in love with the dashing Lyon Burke; Neely O'Hara, an ebullient vaudevillian who becomes a Hollywood star and self-destructs; and Jennifer North, a showgirl with little talent but a gorgeous face and figure, who becomes a friend to both. All three women fall prey to the "dolls," amphetamines and barbiturates, a euphemism which Susann coined.
About Nena Orcutt
Nena Orcutt is an aspiring author, who thinks too much, Listens to a lot of music. Needs coffee to function. Who thinks Bukowski was a wise man and Hemingway was a genius. And feels romance isn’t dead. She is working on her debut novel “The Crow and The Butterfly” Making her home in Music City she’s ready to conquer the writing world and leave her mark.
