Valley of the Dolls (PG-13, 1967)
Netflix synopsis: In this movie based on Jacqueline Susann’s best- selling novel, small-town girl Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins) heads to Broadway, where she meets Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke), who’ll stop at nothing to get her name on the bill, and Jennifer North (Sharon Tate), a bewitching beauty who longs to be taken seriously. As their careers rise and fall, the starlets turn to the comforts of sex, drugs and romance — a sure combination for drama and disaster. Review: I haven’t read the book, but I’d heard about this movie as a cult classic star in the pop culture stratosphere. I don’t remember seeing any of the three leading ladies in any other film, but they’re all very good here – Parkins playing the graceful, elegant girl with the “classy cheekbones” who upon leaving her small-town world, gets noticed by a client of the agency she works for and becomes the “Gilliam Girl” (hairspray, hairspray, hairspray!); Patty Duke plays the more homely girl who has ambitions as large as her talent and becomes a big star, and a luminescent Sharon Tate plays Jen North – the blonde bombshell who easily acknowledges that she’s got the body but not the brains/talent.
One by one, as their stories are told – sometimes intertwining, sometimes not, they either descend or ascend the further they get into the dark side of “show business.” The glass half empty side of Entourage. Anne Welles gets romantically involved w/an agent who’s a louse of a man, big-time stardom begins turning Neely into a big-time pill-popping bitch and North’s reluctance to doing “French art films”
(i.e., nudie pics – or as I think Neely calls it – “booby pics”) yields to her need to earn money to afford her boyfriend’s stay in a ward.
As much as I believe this film is seen nowadays as camp, I actually didn’t think it was that over the top – other than perhaps, some parts of Patty Duke’s portrayal of Neely (her angry scene where she catches Ted Casablancas, her “fag” of a boyfriend – to which she retorts, and I’ve proved he’s not! – w/another woman in her swimming pool and proceeds to “disinfect” the pool by pouring booze into it). I took the story and performances at face value and found the movie to be pretty entertaining, though not that compelling.
I also think that a lot of the stuff portrayed in this movie was taboo at the time – women pill-popping, boozing it up, the “dark side” of Hollywood, and the portrayal and outright discussion of homosexuality in Hollywood. This last notion is very interesting if you watch the special feature doc on the making of, which includes many interviews, including many famous gay people who love the film. The “f-” term is thrown around a lot, which threw me off initially. But the way these guys thought of it, homosexuality in the 1960s was so kept under wraps that they loved the fact that this movie talked about it so openly. There’s one pretty great line where Sharon Tate says – well, you know how bitchy f*gs can be. She pulls it off so matter-of-factly that the tone isn’t malicious – it’s more like they’re such ordinary people that she’s surrounded by them and just making a statement.
Ah, and great fashions too. The montages reminded me of Funny Face, which I love love love. I’ll be checking out the sequel/remake – “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” based on this one – thanks for the rec Phil!
Rating: 3 stars.
Audrey
