Valley of the Dolls (2 Stars)

Jacqueline Susann's 1966 novel, "Valley of the Dolls", was a worldwide success, selling more than 30 million copies. This film, made a year later, is a disaster. It tells the story of three young women who meet and become friends in New York. Anne Welles works as a secretary for a theatre agent. Neely O'Hara is a Broadway singer who breaks into cinema and becomes a major film star. Jennifer North is an unsuccessful Broadway dancer with no talent other than her breasts, which she uses to make a career in nudist films. Three very different women, but what unites them is their addiction to prescription pills, which they call "dolls".

The problem with the film is that it's disjointed. It tells three separate stories, jumping from one to the other. The film is very episodic in nature, fast forwarding years at a time. It's difficult to understand the characters as a result. Anne starts as a confused small town girl in New York, then she's a successful business woman, then she's a junkie. We don't see a progression from one stage to the next. The film is only two hours long and leaves out a lot of details which I assume are described in the book, details that would make the characters more believable.

After this failed film attempt, a television mini-series was made based on the book in 1981. Yet another television series was made in 1994 that ran for 65 episodes. I'm sure this was a better format to tell the story. And I've read that yet another television series is being planned, directed by Lee Daniels.