Herald rating: *
Running time: 95 mins
Rental: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
Who wrote Valley Of The Dolls? It comes up in Trivial Pursuit, but Jacqueline Susann contributed far more to the modern cult of celebrity than one 60s potboiler about the stars' sex and drug lives.
The woman who Truman Capote said "looks like
a truck driver in drag" virtually invented the obsession.
Bright, vicious, funny, ambitious, Susann (Bette Midler) and rich husband Irving Mansfield (Nathan Lane) both trashed and treasured the circles they moved in, while hiding their private tragedies (an autistic son, visited on weekends in a luxury clinic; cancer).
Pity, then, that they couldn't find a better writer for this material and great cast (John Cleese, Stockard Channing, David Hyde Pierce). Someone like Jacqueline Susann.
