Starring in the camp classic Valley of the Dolls were, from left, Sharon Tate, Barbara Parkins and Patty Duke
TERRY VANDIVORT | Contributing Writer
TV75218@aol.com
February 1966: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann is published. By May, it’s No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, remaining one of the best-selling novels in history.
Jackie becomes a regular on the talk show circuit, plugging her “dirty book’’ about sex, Broadway and Hollywood.
I’m in eighth grade. Raging hormones demand I buy a copy. I read it on my way to Hell.
Then they make a movie. It’s legendary in its badness, and almost every gay man I know loves this film. Some have watch parties, because hilarity is best enjoyed together.
Recommended menu: Beanie Weenies and Franzia Box Rose. Cheap is mandatory.
Dolls, unfortunately, begins promisingly. Dionne Warwick’s gorgeous rendition of the theme lulls us into a false sense of security. But fear not, girls! The director is Mark Robson of disastrous Earthquake fame. But seven years before Earthquake, he made the first disaster film: Valley of the Dolls, a stew of melodrama, soap opera and camp, both high and low.
And everyone knows queers invented camp. It’s in our DNA.
But now let’s meet our doomed, delicious divas. Oscar winner Patty Duke plays focal character Neely O’Hara. And, you can’t say she doesn’t try. She’s so over the top she circles the universe.
Barbara Parkins, star of television’s Peyton Place, is sensible Anne Welles, a thankless role for which she must be eternally thankful. Sharon Tate, whose extreme beauty and innate talent spare her from humiliation, plays ill-fated sex symbol Jennifer North. And Oscar-winner Susan Hayward is Broadway legend Helen Lawson, chewing whatever scenery Patty Duke can’t swallow.
Anne’s rise to fame is head-spinning. Becoming secretary of a talent agency, where snore-inducing future husband Lyon Burke works, she’s tasked with taking contracts to Helen, who’s rehearsing her new show, Hit the Sky, which really should be called Hit the Dirt. Anne hears Neely rehearsing and praises her, infuriating Helen who cuts both song and actress.
But then we get to see the show. Or at least Helen’s big number, the showstopping — literally — “I’ll Plant My Own Tree.” Is she a glamorous gardener? Who the fuck knows.
Helen stands centerstage inside a revolving multi-colored mobile, complete with translucent panels, smeared with fingerprints and smudges, threatening to behead her if she moves wrong.
Alas, she doesn’t.
Anne, Neely and Jennifer become fast friends. Because it’s in the script.
Anne becomes a super model, hawking cosmetics in a slideshow montage that’s Andy Warhol meets acid flashback. She wears assorted dresses, extreme makeup and weird hairstyles clearly designed by Helen Keller.
Paging Patty Duke.
Neely, booked to sing on a telethon, immediately becomes a star because this iconic scene features Neely and her trained necklace. Mimicking Joe Cocker moves and gestures, the necklace circles outside both breasts, inside both breasts, looping one breast, looping the other breast until the grande finale where she loops each simultaneously.
Paging America’s Got Talent!
The telethon leads to a cabaret act, records, Grammy Awards, movie musicals and stardom.
The pressure is unbearable. She has to “Sparkle, Neely! Sparkle.’’
So — you guessed it — hello dolls (that’s a slang term in this movie for barbituates and amphetamines). But good God! Who the hell can blame her? I just took three myself.
Meanwhile, Jennifer falls in love with nightclub singer Tony Polar, who sings his hit “Come Live With Me” directly to her. Their romance is so whirlwind it lasts just one scene, but Sharon Tate’s teasing and flirtation, her happiness is delightful — until Tony is diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, doomed to a sanitarium.
This news leads Jen where? Hello again, dolls.
Neely’s life spirals into more booze and more dolls, and she’s fired from her current film.
Binging again, she ends up in bed with a total stranger. (Full disclosure: I’ve experienced that, let’s just say, more than Neely).
Next stop: sanitarium, where mean, butch nurses initiate hydrotherapy in which she’s stuck in a bathtub and confined beneath canvas from the neck down. That oughta do the trick.
Neely does improve, and, on inmate talent night, she sings “Come Live With Me.” Then someone joins her: Tony. In the same sanitarium? What’re the odds?
This preposterous cliché, surprisingly, actually works. Because Patty Duke is so focused, so connected to Tony, that the actress from Miracle Worker reminds us who she is.
Neely’s released, anxious to work, and steals Lyon. This briefly gives Anne something to do. Swallowing dolls, she wanders the beach, falling face first into sand and surf.
Jennifer, meanwhile, finds success in foreign soft-core porn to pay for Tony’s care. But that career ends when Jen is diagnosed with breast cancer and faces a double mastectomy. She prepares for suicide, and, after she takes an overdose of dolls, the camera stays on her face and her memories of love and loss as she drifts away to death.
It’s the one genuinely, deeply moving scene in the film.
But no time to linger. At a special event honoring Helen, Neely appears, and Helen, infuriated, goes into the powder room to smoke. In this scene, she wears a multi-colored sequined pantsuit that only a drag queen on crack would buy.
Neely pops into the powder room, and the two get into a catfight. (Paging Alexis and Crystal.) It ends with Neely ripping Helen’s wig off to reveal a shock of white hair. Neely flushes the wig down the toilet and rushes out, triumphant.
But Neely’s triumph is short-lived; she relapses on opening night and is so fucked up her understudy replaces her. More booze, more dolls, and she’s lumbering down a dark alley in a mink crying to the sound of clanging gongs of doom and calling out to everyone she’s ever wronged, including God — so this takes some time.
In a sublime nod to melodramatic tragedy, Neely falls to her knees in a filthy alley and screams, ‘’I’m Neely O’Hara!”
And this is exactly what we the audience have waited for.
Finis.