Chapter 10

Valley of the Dolls

In 1966, author Jacqueline Susann had published a novel called Valley of the Dolls. It chronicled the lives of three career women trying to achieve fame and fortune in the entertainment industry, and the sordid world into which they fell as their careers advanced or declined. The central character, Anne Welles, comes to New York City, where she lands a job with a theatrical agent. When she takes some papers to a theatre for an aging Broadway star, Helen Lawson, to sign, she meets Neely O’Hara, a talented young singer working with Lawson on a show, and Jennifer North, a buxom showgirl, whose career is controlled by her physical attributes. The lives and careers of these three women—Anne, Neely and Jennifer—with their successes, failures, drug addiction, illnesses, suicides and romances, are thereafter linked. Anne, based roughly on Jacqueline Susann herself, suffers through the trauma of several unhappy, thwarted relationships with various men while achieving fame as a model. Neely, a character modeled on the career of Judy Garland, gains great fame but falls victim to drug and alcohol dependency, alienating all of those around her with her tantrums and breakdowns. And Jennifer, having only her beauty to forward her career, suffers a series of terrible disasters before taking her own life. It was all high, soap-opera-style melodrama, considered laughably and unbelievably bad even by the most generous of the critics in the mid 1960s. Nevertheless, the book was a hit, and there was every expectation that it would transfer to screen as a blockbuster of major proportions.¹

Twentieth Century Fox Studios bought the rights to the novel in 1966 and immediately set about scripting the film version. To ensure the quality of the production, no one would be cast unless they first auditioned and undertook a screen test. This was unheard of behavior on the part of a major studio in Hollywood, and it sent shockwaves through the acting community, with both actors and actresses declaring that it was beneath their dignity to audition for any screen role.² But the studio was adamant, and it is some testament to her presence and talent that Sharon, auditioned and tested, won the part of Jennifer over several other better-known actresses.

Sharon wanted the part badly. Ransohoff, who still held her under contract to Filmways, willingly lent her to Twentieth Century Fox for the duration of the filming. She had few illusions about the quality of either the book or the production, and complained that it was really an “exploitation” picture. But she hoped that the film, with a major studio pushing it and the attendant publicity, would establish her as a serious actress and enhance her visibility and name recognition in Hollywood.

“Since the book was a runaway bestseller,” Sharon said, “I was sure the leading roles would go to big name stars. You know, like Natalie Wood, or somebody like that. But I was just thrilled to get the role, I liked Jennifer as I read the book. I think she is the most sympathetic girl in the group. She’s sweet, unspoiled and unselfish. She doesn’t mean anyone any harm, and yet terrible things keep happening to her.”³

The character of Jennifer North could almost have been written with Sharon Tate in author Jacqueline Susann’s mind: “The girl was undeniably beautiful. She was tall, with a spectacular figure. Her white dress, shimmering with crystal beads, was cut low enough to prove the authenticity of her remarkable cleavage. Her long hair was almost white in its blondeness. But it was her face that held Anne’s attention, a face so naturally beautiful that it came as a startling contrast to the theatrical beauty of her hair and figure. It was a perfect face with a fine square jaw, high cheekbones and intelligent brow. The eyes seemed warm and friendly, and the short, straight nose belonged to a beautiful child as did the even white teeth and little-girl dimples. It was an innocent face, a face that looked at everything with breathless excitement and trusting enthusiasm, seemingly unaware of the commotion the body was causing. A face that glowed with genuine interest in each person who demanded attention, rewarding each with a warm smile.”⁴

Costume designer Travilla, who had dressed Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, later remembered that his fittings with Sharon had left an indelible impression. “Sharon Tate is divine, a real find,” he said. “Just wait and see what happens when the critics and public see her in Valley of the Dolls. Sharon has everything Marilyn Monroe had—and more! She has this fascinating, yet wholly feminine strength of a Dietrich or a Garbo … a classically beautiful face, an exciting figure, the kind of sex appeal and personality appeal to become as glittering a star as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor.…”⁵

Shooting Valley of the Dolls proved to be an ordeal. The director, Mark Robson, had at first attempted to sign Candice Bergen, Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret in the three principal roles, but none of these actresses were interested in the venture. Judy Garland was hired for the part of Helen Lawson, a peripheral character, but, three days into the actual shooting, Garland was fired, apparently because she was secretly drinking and taking pills in her trailer before each scene.⁶ The character of Neely O’Hara had been based on Garland’s up-and-down career, and Garland herself would soon be dead from a drug overdose. Instead, Susan Hayward was signed to take on the role, and production, stalled for a few days, proceeded.

Barbara Parkins was cast in the principal role of Anne Welles, with Patty Duke—fresh from her lengthy stint as the star of television’s The Patty Duke Show—cast as Neely O’Hara. Like their on-screen counterparts, these two women formed a close friendship with the third, Sharon. The friendships were important, for they helped the women to survive the turbulent days on the set of the film.

During the filming, Hollywood gossips filled their magazines with stories of on-set fights, jealousy and revenge. Sharon unwittingly seemed to be at the center of most. One reporter described the filming of a love scene between Barbara Parkins and Paul Burke: “The people in the background were hushed. Just then Sharon, who happened to be among the bystanders, began to move by shifting her weight from leg to leg. Just that. But the men noticed, and the attention was taken away from Barbara. One of the people present that day chuckled as he recalled: ‘The idea that Miss Tate, with clothes on, was getting more attention than Miss Parkins, writhing nude in bed under hot lights, must have made every smile a tough job of acting for Barbara.’”⁷

The chief problem on the set was the director himself. Mark Robson, wrote Patty Duke, “was someone who used humiliation for effect, who could be insulting about your physical appearance and who wouldn’t hesitate to bite your head off in front of everyone.”⁸ While Robson directed some of this hostility toward Duke and Parkins, he apparently saved the lion’s share for Sharon Tate, who, being the quietest and most inexperienced of the three, was the least likely to stand up to him.

“She was a gentle, gentle creature—you could be mean to her and she would never retaliate,” Patty Duke later recalled. “I was crazy about her and I didn’t know anyone but our director who wasn’t. What’s to dislike? She was an exquisitely beautiful girl who was so comfortable with her beauty that you weren’t intimidated by it. Robson, however, continually treated her like a imbecile, which she definitely was not, and she was very attuned and sensitive to this treatment.”⁹

Some of Robson’s instructions to Sharon were truly humiliating. In one scene, for example, he demanded that Sharon enter on her right foot and say “Hi,” before moving to her left foot to say the next line and back and forth, foot to line. “It was truly demeaning,” Patty Duke recalled, “like the old, ‘Can she walk and chew gum at the same time?’ line.” In another scene, Robson continually badgered Sharon about the way she walked and sat; after several hours of this, Sharon finally broke down and fled the set in tears. Only Duke and Parkins were able to calm her down enough to finish the scene in the way Robson demanded.¹⁰

Although the role of Jennifer relied more on Sharon’s beauty than her ability as an actress, she was determined to wrest something from the part. In an interview during the film’s production, Sharon went to great lengths to dismiss the idea that Jennifer was simply a sex symbol. “I don’t go into the person as thinking of her as just sexy,” she explained. “I would stop and I would think, well, how is she mentally, and what moves this into that, and therefore I don’t really think … of the character as being a sex symbol or a sex goddess or whatever you’d like to call it.”

“I learned a great deal about acting in this film,” Sharon told one interviewer, “particularly in my scenes with Lee Grant.… She knows what acting is all about and everything she does, from little mannerisms to delivering her lines, is pure professionalism.”¹¹

The part of Jennifer, even more than the roles of Anne Welles and Neely O’Hara, was clearly conceived to provide a tragic element in the storyline. At the beginning of the film, she is a mere chorus girl in a stage production with Helen Lawson. Her first screen appearance was clearly designed to showcase her physical attributes: Sharon, clad in a tight black body leotard, models a ten pound jeweled and feathered headdress. This sets the tone for many of her subsequent scenes.

During a telephone conversation with her difficult mother, Jennifer agrees to pawn a fur coat and send the money home. “I know I don’t have any talent,” she says with resignation, “and all I have is a body.”

During a night out at a club, Jennifer meets Tony Polar (Tony Scotti), a famous singer, and quickly, the pair fall in love. When they finally marry, it is done secretly, without the knowledge of Polar’s controlling sister Miriam (Lee Grant), who, on learning of the union, treats Jennifer as an unwelcome interloper. When Tony collapses on an evening out with Jennifer, a doctor diagnoses a terminal, degenerative disease which Miriam had suspected, and Jennifer is forced to confine her dying husband in a private asylum. She aborts the child she is carrying, fearing that it, too, might be affected. To pay for her husband’s hospital bills, she goes to France and makes softcore pornographic films. When she finally decides to put a stop to the exploitation and return to America—after fighting off the lecherous advances of her director—she discovers a lump in her breast and is diagnosed with cancer.

Her most dramatic moment is her last, when, the night before she is scheduled to have her breast removed, Jennifer reveals her cancer to the visiting Anne Welles. Looking fragile and lost, wrapped in a sweater and curled in a bed, Jennifer explains, “The doctor says it’s not the end of the world. He says lots of women live long and happy lives after breast surgery.… You know, it’s funny, all I’ve ever had is my body, and now I won’t even have that.… Let’s face it, all I know how to do is to take off my clothes.” After a telephone call to her mother, during which she decides she cannot tell her the news, Jennifer leaves her bed, stands before a mirror and empties a bottle of pills into her mouth, staring at her reflection. Changing into a long beige evening gown and doing her makeup, she lays down on her bed, tears streaming down her face as she dies.

During breaks in the filming, Sharon gave press interviews in the commissary at Twentieth Century Fox. The impression was always memorable: “She wore a long-sleeved, white jersey mini dress with a high neckline and hemline, dainty-heeled sandals, no stockings, no make-up and super-sized, wrap around rose tinted sunglasses. Her straight, streaked, blonde hair tumbled casually past her shoulders. Every male head within viewing range swiveled in her direction as if she were pulling invisible strings; forks stayed at half-mast long after she had passed the table; bus-boys in her wake suddenly developed a clattering case of butterfingers. Sharon didn’t seem the least bit aware of the commotion she was causing.”¹²

Not surprisingly, many of the questions concerned Sharon’s willingness to do nude scenes. “In Valley of the Dolls,” she said, “I have a nude scene and I have no qualms about it at all. I don’t see any difference between being stark naked or fully dressed—if it’s part of the job and it’s done with meaning and intention. I honestly don’t understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It’s silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can’t watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn’t make any sense, does it?”¹³

Near the end of filming, Look magazine sent out a writer, Betty Rollin, to do a piece on the production and its stars. Called “The Dames in The Valley of the Dolls,” the piece flattered no one. Rollin thought little of the film, which she referred to as “that candy box of vulgarity,” nor its stars, calling Parkins a mental nonentity, Duke “today’s sewer mouth,” and Sharon a hopelessly stupid and vain starlet. Rollin noted that Sharon had spent two hours applying makeup prior to the interview, and declared that she “doesn’t go in much for underwear.” Sharon complained about other people’s expectations of her, and naively told Rollin, “I’m trying to develop myself as a person. Well, like sometimes on weekends I don’t wear makeup.” Rollin’s piece did little to enhance Sharon’s reputation as a serious actress in Hollywood circles.¹⁴

After months of work, the film finally wrapped production with the traditional cast party. “By the close of shooting,” Patty Duke wrote, “everybody hated everybody.”¹⁵ Director Robson was all sweetness and light with his cast; one day, when he met Roman Polanski walking along the Sunset Strip, he said, “That’s a great girl you’re living with. Few actresses have her kind of vulnerability. She’s got a great future.”¹⁶ But his treatment of Sharon on the set had been anything but great, and she was immensely relieved to have the whole thing, which she regarded as an ordeal, finally over.