JohnHowardReid
Copyright 15 December 1967 by Red Lion Productions. Released through 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening simultaneously at the Criterion and the Festival: 15 December 1967. U.S. release: 15 December 1967. U.K. release: 11 February 1968. Australian release: 1 August 1968. Sydney opening at the Plaza. 11,086 feet. 123 minutes. Censored by approximately 90 seconds in Australia.SYNOPSIS: Filled with innocent enthusiasm, Anne Welles arrives in New York from New England and lands a secretarial job with a leading theatrical law firm. On her first day, she is present at a Broadway rehearsal when a hard-boiled musical comedy star, Helen Lawson, sacks a talented newcomer named Neely O'Hara because she threatens to steal the show from her. Although disillusioned, Anne stays with her job because of Lyon Burke, an associate in the law firm. Lyon gets Neely a spot on a TV show which catapults her to instant stardom in Hollywood. NOTES: Location scenes filmed in New York and New England. On 21 July 1967, shortly after shooting on "Valley of the Dolls" was completed, producer David Weisbart, 52, died of a stroke he suffered while playing golf with Mark Robson, the film's director.The role of Helen Lawson was originally slated for Judy Garland. After 20th Century-Fox claimed that she "withdrew for personal reasons" (a statement denied by Miss Garland), both Bette Davis and Tammy Grimes were announced as her replacement. When Susan Hayward was ultimately signed for the part, arrangements were made for Margaret Whiting to do the dubbing for Miss Hayward's one song number.With gross rentals of $20 million, this movie was equal 4th at U.S./Canadian ticket-windows for 1968. On the other hand, the movie did not figure on either British or Australian top-success lists at all!COMMENT: The womenfolk may dote on this slickly-produced parade of souped-up emotions and super-charged clichés. For us men, however, it's a somewhat disappointing affair. We see almost nothing of Hollywood at work. The book was a sensational best-seller because it reputedly lifted the lid off the private lives of some well-known stars. But all this has been deleted in the film. There is some resemblance between the Patty Duke character and Judy Garland, between Barbara Parkins and Suzy Parker, while Sharon Tate's Jennifer North seems to have originally been a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Anita Ekberg.Alas, even these superficial resemblances in the original novel scarcely exist any more in the film version. All we are left with is a soap-opera plot straight out of a daytime television serial. True, the direction is slick, and the acting very capable (with the one exception of Miss Parkins, who is unable to surmount some very unattractive hair styles).Other assets include lavish production values (though Daniels' color photography, as usual, looks washed-out); exciting special effects incorporating a slice of a French "art" film and an incredibly tasteless TV commercial — evidently intended as a satire, it was taken perfectly straight by the predominantly female audience at the session I attended, — and a few excellent montages of the New England countryside (accompanied by the pleasant singing of Dionne Warwick).
mark.waltz
One of the funniest "bad movies" ever made, "Valley of the Dolls" is one of three Jacqueline Susann novels made into films, and without a doubt, the best. In fact, the other two ("The Love Machine" and "Once is Not Enough") pale in comparison to this, both in the history of their filming, and in the outrageousness of the plot line. It's a tale as old as time, a story of three struggling young women in New York City who will all find struggles as they are objectified, envied, turned into drunks and druggies, and like "Three on a Match", one will not survive, one will struggle to survive, and the third will find happiness through the old fashioned notions of what a woman should be. These three ladies are Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate, all talented in their own way, and while Parkins might be the brains of the trio and Tate the buxom stereotypical dumb sexpot, it's Duke who gets the majority of the attention. Coming off of winning an Oscar, a hit TV show, a fairly successful movie ("Billie"), Duke was the one who got the big build-up, although photographers took notice of Tate's beauty and "Peyton Place" fans flocked to see Parkins on the big screen. "Valley of the Dolls" is as scandalous as that New England small town, and set in the world of high fashion, advertising and the entertainment world, the Big Apple is not at all like that sleepy little town where every seemingly noble citizen had a scandal. Sure, the scandals here are present, but it's expected in a noisy city like New York where you can blend into the crowds to escape from notoriety. The women all end up in bad relationships, and one will find herself greatly abused by men, while one takes the desperate way out and the third realizes the only way she can escape a similar ending is to escape from it altogether.Then there's Susan Hayward's Helen Lawson, a Broadway star of the Ethel Merman dynamic who is resentful of the upstart Neeley O'Hara and has her one musical number cut from the show they are in together. This is based on an alleged (and disproven theory) of a story that happened between Merman and supporting player Betty Hutton years before (and could have conceivably have happened with any other major star as well), and in the case of Duke's Neeley, she turns to alcohol and drugs to escape from the pressures of a rising young musical actress on Broadway. Hayward is as bitchy as a Broadway diva can be, obviously scarred of losing her grasp as the leading star of the musical theater, and treats Duke with disdain from the moment they meet. But after making somewhat of a name for herself, Duke pulls out one last stop to get revenge on Hayward, and it is not without cost to either of them.This is filled with great bad dialog, a few songs (including a beautiful Burt Bacharach theme song sung by Dionne Warwick) and some moments of pure camp that audiences still treasure. Who can forget Duke's beads wrapping themselves into a pretzel while singing "It's Impossible", and the bad set of Hayward's "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in her one musical number where she proclaims a love of humanity but inspires nothing but hatred from co-stars and those in the theater community who know what a demanding diva she can be. I would have found it disconcerting to have seen Judy Garland in this part, as while she could have certainly been commanding, and had played a few tough broads before, none of her characters were ever as mean. It's been rumored that Susann wrote Neeley about her, which would have been strange if Garland had to take down Duke while playing a variation of her old pal Ethel Merman. As for Parkins and Tate, they have a more difficult task in playing characters not as colorful as Duke's extremely troubled Neeley. Parkins is smart, sensitive and unlucky in love, pretty without being a sexpot or brassy. She's by far the most likable of the three, and manages to make her character become human, not saintly, and sort of the protectress of the three. Tate finds out the hard way that being buxom and sexy isn't always a plus in getting ahead, because nobody takes her serious as a talent, thinks she's stupid, and eventually this only leads her to make a living with one item required: a body. Of the three, she is the saddest. Duke keeps falling down and getting up, yet never seeming to learn any lessons. When she ends up passed out in a seedy hotel, obviously having just been used for the most vile of street trash, it really is sad to see how far one person with so much potential can fall.So this is Susann's warning to young girls everywhere longing for a career in the bright lights of Broadway or the world premieres of a Hollywood movie: unless you really have what it takes to make a talent, try and think of a different way of making a living. While there are male characters here, they really are supporting, only bringing on the conflict or not being able to handle the neuroses of these three different women. This film was very bold in some of the subject matters it dealt with, including drug abuse, alcoholism, pornography and in the case of the man Duke ends up with, homosexuality. Hollywood had changed a lot since "Three on a Match", and even if that had the benefit of being made before the production code, it didn't have the social issues of the 60's to show the grittiness of life in the big city as "Valley of the Dolls" did 35 years later.
