Now, fresh from 2-disc DVD rehab, David K and editor John Calendo discuss the magic, the myth, and the madness of Valley of the Dolls.

 

David K: For years I’ve been smitten with the publicity still of the three girls on the bed. It’s the most famous image associated with the film.

John Calendo: It’s too bad the three actresses never appear in the same scene together. As to what they might all be doing on a big ‘ol Hollywood bed except trying on each other’s falls, I will leave to the girl-on-girl aficionados.

DK: That image symbolizes the heart of what I love most about Dolls: It’s a movie about glamorous, beautiful women … with big hair. But for all its pinky glamor the photo is also disturbing. The way the trio is juxtaposed on the bed, but not relating to each other — that signals complications. Goodie! A movie about Gals in Trouble! That fact shoots the film into the queer stratosphere. Beauty and chaos intermingling — it’s an addictive combo.

JC: We also need to talk about that curlicue headboard with the pink tufted upholstery. It sort of floats over the picture like a crown. It says this is a movie about queens, for queens.

DK: You can tell a lot from the posture of the women. I find my eye going to the way Barbara Parkins is kneeling on the bed. So incredibly sexy and subservient. Patty Duke looks small and mean and a bit stoned. I think she absorbed a lot from Susan Hayward. She’s sort of Helen Lawson Lite. And then there’s Sharon Tate, just so laid back, spreading herself out and waiting to be admired.

JC: Every time Sharon Tate walked on I kept going, God, she’s so ultra Sixties beautiful, she took my breath away. And then she would recite her memorized lines, and it was yawn. But let’s get back to Barbara Parkins in the photo. Yes, the kneeling is subservient, but the straightness of the spine conveys pride, defiance — Aida in chains. You get a sense, as in the movie, that she knows the power of her beauty over men and bedrooms.

DK: The image clarity of the new DVD made me realize how gorgeous the movie is. The art direction is fagtastic — Pop Art colors coming at you from every direction, the Travilla gowns that never stop. Wow! Putting Neely in the white, fluted Goddess gown against Helen Lawson’s glitterfest pantsuit, that’s right out of the What Becomes a Legend Most ad campaign! And of course, when her wig goes flying, there’s Sue Hayward — not with white hair — but a fabulous champagne blonde coif, the movie’s stand-in for white hair! You know John, it really is a movie about hairdos. In crisis.

JC: I was taken this time with how crazy beautiful Barbara Parkins was. She had this dark, Liz Taylor, triple-ply Maybelline intensity. She really holds her own and does it in a thankless role with none of the over-the-top lines we all quote. It’s her beauty, her high-class sultriness, that holds me, also the way she pronounces her lines like she learned English is some posh school in South Africa. I mean, when she looks at Lyon — who the actress thought was too old an actor to be her romantic interest; she was dating Cat Stevens at the time — you see her face actually melt with love: the eyes go out of focus, the lips part and glisten. A stunning bit of technical acting.

DK: It’s like when you first see the movie you go through a Neely phase. Then you got hooked on Helen Lawson. And now finally, we’re appreciating Sharon Tate and Barbara Parkins!

JC: Honey, the ravages of a misspent youth.

DK: And “At night, all cats are gray,” to quote Lee Grant in one of the most mysterious non sequiturs in the film.

JC: Lee Grant looks so bitter in Dolls that if a baby happened to kiss her, it would instantly die.

DK: As much as I enjoy the terrible dialogue and the feline bitchiness, it’s the artistry of the film that impresses me now. Amidst all the camp rubble of Dolls there are fabulous gems — like the art direction, Barbara Parkins and of course the Dionne Warwick theme song — to me it’s a gorgeous tune: Evocative. Haunting.

JC: Right! We can finally see this film now. The fakeness no longer obstructs how expensive and beautiful the kitsch is. The montages are fabulous cartoon things that seem dropped in from a hip French film of the 60’s: Neely’s workout. The Gillian Girl commercial.

DK: Oh my God, The Gillian Girl commercial!

JC: Yeah, where my girl Barbara Parkins goes through, like, 100 high-Sixties falls in two breathless minutes. The Gillian Girl commercial is one of those core moments in a teenager’s life when you watch it and say to yourself yeah, I’m gay. Yeah, I’m totally on the bus.

DK: But let’s get back to the sordid. Neely’s final scene in the alley. Is that a nervous breakdown or just too much Italian hamming? With all those hand gestures.

JC: Poor Patty Duke. The bar was so high for her. The Miracle Worker was so sensational. Throwing all that dishwear around as Helen Keller. Sparkle, Patty, sparkle.

DK: The most unforgettable moment is when she’s calling out to God and then pauses and sort of reconsiders it. “God?… Neely? GOD! NEELY!” Like she’s choosing between the two. ‘I’m NEELY OHARA!” It’s absolutely nuts.

JC: And yet it works. She goes big and yet she’s actually touching — as well as being magnificently degraded. Sprawled out against the garbage cans.

DK: And while we’re talking sordid, let’s move on to the Mother of All Dolls, Jacqueline Susann.

JC: Please pronounce it Su-zhann – as she did. She was so posh, you know, and just by accident happened to write all those filthy bestsellers.

DK: You nailed her when you wrote Dolls was her squaresville read on swinger mentality. The book is intended to be hip and racy, but what’s odd is that she has this very 1940’s masculine attitude. She penalized her female characters for having sex, for not wanting homes and babies. Jackie’s dolls get punished for their free-loving, swinging ways.

JC: Darling, you have to climb Mount Everest to get a good fuck — some things never change. Meanwhile, when I think Jackie Susann I think Pucci skirt, a big fall and a big headband. She was, like, Yentas Gone Wild! Like a Cosmo editor that had stumbled on her daughter’s acid. I remember watching her in a dorm room where everybody was tripping their ass off and she comes on TV with all the crazy Pucci prints crashing against each other, looking elongated and exaggerated. And she’s being so very Dr. Joyce Brothers pulled-together, but all that’s coming out of her mouth is sex and dope and show business and sex. We were sure she was on mushrooms.

DK: Did you know — and this blows my mind — Dolls is the biggest selling novel in history. The National Library Association puts out a list of all-time bestsellers, and Dolls is always right up there with The Bible and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book!

JC: She never got any serious respect, though. Of course, the French haven’t weighed in yet.

DK: I’ll never forget when Truman Capote went on Carson and said she looked like a truck driver in a miniskirt.

JC: I guess he was pissed that she used to refer to herself in the same breath as Charles Dickens. “Dickens was dismissed in his day too,” she’d tell Johnny. “They thought he was too sentimental.” Hardly, but that was her shtick.

DK: Well, she eventually demanded an apology, and Capote gave it: To all the truck drivers in the world.

 

	Of all the songs written by Andre Previn and his wife Dory for The Valley of the Dolls, only one isn’t a clunker — the theme. Dory Previn, we now know, was a schizophrenic in the throes of a serious drug problem. The DVD states that she wanted to capture the sad, stuttering confusion of her addiction with the song’s opening lines: “Gotta get off, gonna get, have to get off from this ride.” Certainly one of the reasons the song is so haunting. “When will I know?,” the song asks at another point. “How will I think of my name? Where are you? Is this a dream? Why do we cry?” Girl! So many questions, and not enough dolls in the world to ever narcotize the existential angst! Mr. Previn’s music underscores the befuddled soul-searching by mimicking a tinkling, teen-girl’s music box, as performed by a slow speed merry-go-round. Dionne Warwick is at the top of her form, molding the vocals with characteristically clear, focused enunciations. In the film, Warwick works her way through three versions of the theme, each one highlighting a different moment in doll-doped dementia. A divergent mix of artists have done covers of this merry-go-round song, including Gladys Knight and the Pips, jazz singer Karen Oberlin, and the Ray Conniff Singers (would love to hear that bit of canned muzak!) The futuristic guitarist Gabor Szabo recently featured the song on his appropriately titled Bacchanal. I think Andy Williams is the only male singer to take it on, which isn’t surprising. The song’s muddled languor and note of pleading isn’t anywhere near male musical turf — unless we’re talking Rufus Wainwright or, perhaps, Kurt Cobain. Because of contractual snafus Dionne Warwick couldn’t release the version she sang in the film. A lucky setback because Burt Bacharach added his special hit-making magic to her re-recorded version. Still, I think my favorite is k.d. lang’s very effective spin on the song from her under-appreciated Drag. Lang injected just the right blend of reverence and kitsch to bring the lyrics back to life — probably because her relationship to camp is an authentic one. As a result, she salvages the song and sets it spinning before us like the gem that it is.

 

Still hooked on dolls?

Deluxe 2-DVD Special Edition of the film.

Part 1 of our Dolls coverage
Our Helen Lawson tribute

The Jacqueline Susann novel that began it all.

And, of course, …
Narcotics Anonymous.