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| Jacqueline Susann always knew how to play her cards right when it came to writing bestsellers. |
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| Grace Metalious and her own 'Peyton Place.' |
Try
to imagine what it was like to be a woman writer in mid-century America—especially
a hugely successful writer.
Here’s two
takes on the fame game, by the most successful female writers of the ‘50s and
‘60s, respectively.Grace
Metalious, whose novel, Peyton Place,
sold 12 million copies yet was synonymous with smut, said: “If I’m a lousy
writer, then a hell of a lot of people got lousy tastes.” And
Jacqueline Susann, author of Valley of
the Dolls, which eventually sold over 30 million copies, was dismissed as a
self-promoter rather than a real writer, believed: “If the book is not there, you
cannot make it a hit.”
Both
novels, in their time, riled up critics and clergy alike, and were dismissed as
illiterate and filth. Readers devoured the juicy Peyton and Dolls, ripping
through the page-turning stories, searching for “the good parts.”
At
the time, few reviewers or readers considered Peyton Place or Valley of the
Dolls great writing. Harold Robbins, the male counterpart to Jacqueline
Susann, was always panned—but with Susann and Metalious, the criticism became
personal. Subjectivity aside, the books are now conceded as good storytelling,
with strong female characters acting on their desires.
The Skinny on Scandal Books
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| "Peyton Place" came out September, 1956 |
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| "Dolls" was published February of 1966. |
Masterfully
written or not, both novels had memorable opening lines. Metalious even makes
the weather in Peyton Place sound
sexy! She begins: “Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but
fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she
will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.”
Susann
starts her showbiz saga with a chilling and campy cautionary poem. An excerpt:
“You've got to climb to the top of Mount Everest
to reach the Valley of the Dolls.
It's a brutal climb to reach that peak,
which so few have seen.
You never knew what was really up there,
but the last thing you expected to find
was the Valley of the Dolls.
You stand there, waiting for
the rush of exhilaration
you thought you’d feel—but
it doesn't come.”
Don’t
you just hate it when that happens?
Peyton Place
scrutinizes the slimy secrets of the small towns—under a fictionalized title
guise—where the author had restlessly lived as the wife of a school teacher. Metalious
wasn’t speaking for the New Hampshire Visitor’s Bureau with this famous quote
about their quaint burgs: “To a tourist, these towns look as peaceful as a
postcard picture. But if you go beneath that picture, it’s like turning over a
rock with your foot.”
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| Grace, looking for inspiration? |
Sure,
Peyton Place found alcoholism,
prejudice, rape, incest, premarital sex, abortion, illegitimate children,
mistresses, and murder under those rocks. However, Metalious goes beyond skin
deep sensation. The author creates a full-bodied, fully-dimensional look at the
lives of small town people. Peyton Place
still resonates.
Valley of the Dolls
is all big city heartbreak. Dolls
dishes on three young women on Broadway and later, in Hollywood. These showbiz
dolls find success, but alas, not happiness. As sales-oriented as Susann
seemed, she fought for her Dolls’
unhappily ever after: “I’m not going to put a happy fucking ending on this
book. That’s not the way life works for these people.”
With Dolls, Susann knew how to create the
sizzle. Her showbiz dolls make their arduous climb to the top, with a few stops
along the way for illicit affairs, pills, booze, the funny farm, abortions—not
to mention discreetly described oral and anal sex. But Jackie cooks up an
authentic showbiz story that’s meaty and still matters in our scandal-driven
media.
In
both books, Metalious and Susann write female characters that might make mistakes
or endure setbacks, but are ultimately in charge of their destinies.
Peyton Place
is equated with the buttoned-down 1950s, while Valley of the Dolls is synonymous with the swingin’‘60s. Despite
the fact that both books mostly take place during the World War II era, they
are really a mirror to the era in which they were published.
Beginnings to Best-Sellers
The
name Grace Metalious may be forgotten, but Peyton
Place is remembered—and still a catch phrase for small town scandal and
gossip. Metalious spent her twenties as a housewife before pouring her frustration
into her first novel. By August of ’55, the Metalious family well had been dry
for nine weeks and they were living on lettuce and tomato sandwiches, washed
down with powdered milk. When Metalious finally got the call saying Peyton Place had sold, a stunned Grace
forgot to ask for how much!
Jacqueline
Susann was an aging starlet and socialite, who felt restless merely on the arm
of her publicist husband. Encouraged by friends, Susann wrote a short book
about the adventures of her poodle, Every
Night, Josephine!, which sat in
publisher limbo. “Time is life” was one of Susann’s favorite sayings. Christmas
Eve of 1962 was Jackie’s time to face the facts of her life: she had breast cancer,
needed a mastectomy, and got a warning that it would likely reoccur. Jackie
claimed to make a deal with God: “Give me ten years and a bestseller and I will
die a happy woman.” Jacqueline Susann was 44 at the time.
Susann,
with her dark good looks and over-the-top style, and Metalious, a plump housewife
who wore plaid shirts, rolled-up jeans, and no makeup, appeared to be polar
opposites. Despite outward appearances, both women fought uphill battles to be
taken seriously and validate their self-worth.
Grace
and Jackie were both married at 19. At first, they looked up to the men they
married. Despite ups and downs, Jackie and publicist Irving Mansfield made a
great team; Grace and schoolteacher George Metalious had a typical marriage—a
hot honeymoon that became warmed up leftovers. The ironic twist was that sexy Susann’s
wedding night was a disaster, with Irving fumbling over virginal Jackie, while
the small town Metalious’ were sexually compatible. Grace commented that the
only time they were completely happy was in bed. Gradually, both women flaunted
convention by having affairs, and an increasing reliance on substances—drink
for Grace and “dolls” for Jackie—to get through the rough spots.
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| "Who says I look like a truckdriver in drag?!" |
Susann
was strongly influenced in life and writing by her charismatic yet distant father.
Metalious had it worse, an unloving mother, which hung over her search for
happiness. Yet, this gave Grace her drive
to prove herself as a writer. Also, Jackie was a promiscuous charmer like her
artist father, and Grace became a neurotic spendthrift like her mother.
Small
town Grace dreamed of a better life, and planned to accomplish this through
writing. She often locked the kids out to write, and they’d go to neighbors and
friends to play. Friends and family had mixed feelings about Metalious’
ambitions. Laurie Wilkens, a local newspaper person who became Grace’s best
friend, helped with feedback during the writing process. Wilkens said of the
fledgling writer: “It did not take me long to realize that Grace Metalious was
an extraordinary woman of brilliant intellect.”
But
more often, Grace heard the classic complaint to conform from husband George: “Why can’t you be like everyone else?”
Both
women’s pregnancies were problematic. Susann’s one pregnancy produced a
severely autistic son. Jackie and Irving were crushed. Their boy, Guy, was
unable to live at home, and eventually institutionalized. Jackie was haunted by
the outcome and it drove her even more to succeed. For Grace, childbearing was
dangerous and finally forbidden. Grace was filled with self-pity after her tubes
were tied, but her doctor said that after three dangerous pregnancies, he
wouldn’t attend a fourth. George Metalious, who pointed out they couldn’t even
support the children they had, also insisted the procedure be done. Grace
lamented that she no longer felt like a woman: “Even an alley cat can produce
her own kind, but you can’t.” Metalious turned to writing as a source for
productivity.
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| EVERYONE read "Peyton Place" in the '50s! |
Metalious
grew up in New Hampshire, in various stifling small towns, but it provided her
with a wealth of material. Grace got her most notorious story from Laurie
Wilkens. A farm girl from Gilmanton had killed her father, after years of
raping her, and buried the body in a pig pen. This became a Peyton Place subplot, one that locals
later criticized Metalious bitterly for writing.
Jackie
had cut her teeth as a model and actress in NYC during the late ‘30s and
through the WWII years. Much of this experience is the basis for Valley of the Dolls. And Jackie’s told
out of school tales were about thinly-disguised show biz legends like
pill-popping Judy Garland and Broadway’s tough broad, Ethel Merman. Critics and
columnists alike called Jackie’s roman á clef style tacky—though they kept
writing about her!
Ironically,
protagonist Allison McKenzie goes off to seek her fortune in New York City at
the end of Peyton Place, much like
Susann’s main character, Anne Welles, does at the beginning of Valley of the Dolls.
Making the Cut
“I thought about it twenty-four hours a day
for a year,” said Metalious of Peyton
Place. “I wrote ten hours a day for two and a half months.”
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| "Honey, what are you writing about?" George & Grace Metalious. |
Jackie
Susann wrote Valley of the Dolls in a
year and a half, writing seven hours each day. Susann’s story of pill popping
in showbiz circles wasn’t made up; she and her friends used “dolls” to go to
sleep, get up, and get on with life, and sparkle for decades.
While
Jackie always had P.R. spouse Irving to sing her praises, Grace’s reporter pal Wilkens
announced in the Laconia Evening Bulletin
that “NY publisher House Signs Gilmanton Mother for Three Novels.”
Peyton Place
was turned down by 17 publishers before Julian Messner, Inc., a small
publisher, picked it up and made a fortune, much like niche publisher Bernard
Geis Associates, who cleaned up with Valley
of the Dolls.
Both
books required varying degrees of strong editing, but publishers for Peyton and Dolls felt that they had bestsellers on their hands. Jackie’s
required a much more—restructuring, rewriting, and massive cutting; editing Grace
was mainly for repetition or superfluous material. Susann, with her healthy
ego, took the massive revision in stride; insecure Metalious was oversensitive
to every change or cut. At Messner’s, editor Leona Nevler’s cuts were hardly
severe, but Grace had the classic author’s reaction. “My rage and hurt were
getting worse every minute,” she told Laurie Wilkens.
Metalious
ended up working with Kitty Messner directly, who said she “needed Mama’s
hand.” An interesting choice of words, when one considers Grace’s withholding
mother. Rumors that Messner had taken a hot mess of a novel and shaped it into
a saleable product was not true—Kitty called it “a product of genius.”
Don
Preston, editor of Valley of the Dolls,
had urged Bernard Geis to pass on Susann’s showbiz opus: “90 percent of what
appears is listening outside dressing room doors.”
Susann’s
hubby Irving put a P.R. spin on this talent: “My Jackie has a photographic
ear.”
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| When working on a novel, Jackie wrote 7 hours every day. |
The
Geis editors hated the title Valley of
the Dolls, fearing that it would be mistaken for children’s book. Jackie
was adamant that it stay—she knew instinctively that it was a catchy title. Wisely,
Grace took Messner’s ad agency’s advice and changed her book’s title. The
poetic The Tree and the Blossom
became a more to-the-point Peyton Place.
Rich
and Famous
Leona
Nevler, the editor who discovered Peyton
Place, saw the unedited manuscript for Valley
of the Dolls when she was
negotiating paperback rights: “Editorial help is one thing, but I really think
Don Preston did a thorough line re-write of the book.”
Like
some quarters dissing Dolls as a
total re-write by Preston, some townspeople claimed that Metalious’ pal Laurie
Wilkens actually wrote Peyton Place,
because Grace was uneducated, erratic, and drunk. Wilkens vehemently responded that
she never changed a word: “Here was a real novel, written by a gifted person.”
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| Grace glumly signing copies of "Peyton Place." |
National
reviewers praised Grace’s writing, but always with a preface to Peyton Place’s sexy side. “When
authoress Metalious is not all flustered by sex, she captures a real sense of
the temper, texture, and tensions in the social anatomy of a small town,” wrote
Time’s reviewer.
One
reviewer compared Metalious to such male writers as Sherwood Anderson, Edmund
Wilson, John O’Hara, and Sinclair Lewis, who made careers from turning over the
rocks of small town life.
However,
what sold the novel—and humiliated Grace—was the notoriety Peyton Place received from outraged clergy, women’s groups, local
libraries and bookstores that banned the book, withering small town reviews,
and livid locals. This pulpy publicity is what drove the promotion of Peyton Place—and pigeonholed Grace
Metalious from then on as a writer. No Peyton
Place reviewers at the time caught on to the subversive nature of the book,
questioning the feminine mystique attitude of the time. All they saw was a
smutty book written by…shock…a wife…and a mother! Grace was ahead of her time,
yet unable to deal with being that messenger.
On
Night Beat with Mike Wallace,
Metalious appeared while Jacqueline Susann was working on the show as a
spokesperson. Grace was six years younger and Jackie’s personality was eons
more worldly. Susann was fascinated by Peyton
Place’s publicity and sales. And here was this frumpy woman awkwardly
trying to promote it—Jackie imagined what she could do!
Susann
was also was sympathetic to Metalious, who was taking a beating for writing
about hot stuff that was okay for the boys to pen. Mike Wallace called
Metalious’ book “basic and carnal” to her face and Grace, cowed, could only
make the lame comeback: “You did, huh?”
The
best reviews Jackie got for her book were like columnist Earl Wilson dubbing Valley of the Dolls “steamy!”Time called Dolls the “dirty book of the month.” Even Gloria Steinem reviewed
the book, saying Dolls “is for the
reader who has put away comic books, but isn’t yet ready for editorials in The Daily News.” One critic quipped that
Jackie typed on cash register keys. Gore Vidal took the snark one step further,
saying Susann “doesn’t write, she types.”
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| Critics felt Jackie's true talent was self-promotion. Above: wowing the Teamsters! |
The
reviews for Dolls were dismal, but
the sales were dazzling. Still, Susann felt compelled to compose a rebuttal, My Book Is Not Dirty. It was not
published at the time, but here’s the gist of her gripe with critics: “So many
people seem unable to differentiate between the words shocking and dirty. Truth
is often shocking. It is not dirty. Life is shocking at times ... it is not
dirty.”
Grace
and Jackie’s fantasies of life as a famous writer had a similar, more pristine
ring. Metalious told an interviewer: “I was an author with a contract which
said so, I had a French agent, and a lady publisher. I was in ‘21.’ I had
arrived.”
Susann
told a friend her goal: “I want to
walk into ‘21’ and I want everyone to turn and say, ‘That’s Jacqueline Susann,
the author.’”
“Being number one on the bestseller list, that
was the review she wanted,” said publisher and film producer David Brown about Jackie.
Brown said that Susann knew the tradeoff would be that everyone would put down
her commercial success. And unlike Grace Metalious, Jackie would not be at a
loss for a witty comeback.
Susann
appeared on David Frost’s show in June, 1969, with a “surprise guest,” acidic
critic John Simon—who went straight for Jackie’s jugular.
“Do
you really believe you are writing art or are you just writing trash to make a
lot of money?” accused Simon, sticking his finger in Susann’s face.
Imitating
Simon’s middle-European accent, Jackie jibed: “I haff heard of Neil Simon und
Simple Simon, but vat Simon are you?”
And
that was just the beginning—the low point came when Simon spat out that he
would rather “watch dogs fornicate” than read Susann. That same night, Tonight Show guest Truman Capote commented
to host Johnny Carson that Jacqueline Susann “looked like a truck driver in
drag…a born transvestite.” Jackie was ubiquitous!
Maybe
Jackie should have invoked Dolls
bombshell Jennifer’s famous line: “You know how bitchy fags can be.” Instead,
when Jackie visited Johnny’s late night show a few months later, Carson asked
her what she “thought of Truman.” Susann slyly quipped: “I think history will
prove he was one of the best presidents we’ve had.”
Hollywood Endings
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Metalious foolishly signed away all rights to "Peyton Place."
Above, with producer Jerry Wald, who made the deal. |
Susann
received $180,000 for screen rights to Valley
of the Dolls, a paltry payoff considering it was a decade after Metalious
got $250K for Peyton Place. Both women
were especially unhappy at forfeiting sequel rights to Twentieth Century Fox as
part of the deal. Finally, Susann and Metalious hated that happy endings were
tacked on to the film versions of their well-known books.
The
best-sellers were immediately made into top-grossing movies, both coming out a
year after the book releases. The director for both films, a decade apart, was
Mark Robson. In each case, the greatest task for the director and his
screenwriters was to “clean up” the scandalous stories for the silver screen.
This was Hollywood hypocrisy at its best: Let’s buy a salacious book, turn it
into a whitewashed movie, and promote it as shocking!
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| The film version of "Peyton Place" received 9 Oscar nominations & won zero. |
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| Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, & Patty Duke: 20th Century Fox "Dolls." |
With
Peyton Place, that formula worked.
The critics condescendingly praised the “classy” screen version of Peyton Place as a vast improvement over
the “dirty” book. Yet a few critics at the time called the adaptation sanitized
or antiseptic. The truth falls somewhere in the middle: Peyton Place was run through the Hollywood Hayes Code whitewash
cycle, though it managed to keep key events intact. There was no way in 1957
that the movie could have depicted the book’s dirt intact, so criticism on that
score is a cheap shot. Valley of the
Dolls however, was rightly panned, critics saying it was even worse than book. Whereas Peyton Place the movie kept the
characters empathy and depth, the film version of Valley of the Dolls reduced the book’s characters to caricatures.
Famous
Versus Infamous
When
the photo of Grace Metalious curled up in jeans at a typewriter was published,
it was instantly iconic, and she was dubbed “Pandora in Blue Jeans.” A decade
later, Jacqueline Susann created her trademark look, promoting pulp fiction in
Pucci.
Metalious
did not fare well with the success of—or criticism—directed at Peyton Place. A love-hate attitude
ensued for the last eight years of her life. She divorced, remarried, and
re-divorced George Metalious—and married and divorced another man, in between! She
spent lavishly, but it brought her no joy. Her drinking escalated. Grace was
ill-equipped to deal with the media or book critics. She felt alienated by local
townspeople, who in turn felt betrayed by Peyton
Place. Metalious resented being thought of only as the housewife who
spilled the beans on her neighbors, and not as a real writer. Grace’s downfall
has been oversimplified two ways: the small town girl taken in by city slickers
in the book and movie biz; or, as in Valley
of the Dolls, the “it’s lonely at the top” sad ending. There’s some truth
to both clichés, but Grace’s lack of emotional stability eroded her fame and
innate talent. A writer who interviewed her toward the end of her life said he found
it jarring to see a 30-something woman with the maturity of a high-strung 13-year-old.
Susann
relished every minute of her success. True, Jackie could be hurt by harsh
reviews and pundits, especially as she became more and more famous…and rich! It
bothered her especially when male writers like Capote, Mailer, or Vidal needled
her, feeling that sexism came into play. Women writers got in their digs, like
Gloria Steinem and Nora Ephron. Even Diane Arbus, who specialized in grotesques,
got in the act, photographing over-tanned Jackie and Irving cuddling on an easy
chair in their swimsuits.
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| Irving and Jackie posing for the infamous Diane Arbus pic! |
Around
show business her entire adult life, Susann knew how the game was played, and
tried not to take it personally. But Metalious suffered from publicity fallout
that Susann didn’t have to face. Grace managed to finish two more novels that
proved her talented, but she wasted her physical and emotional energy on
drinking and drama. For the last five years of her life, Metalious drank a
fifth a day. Grace Metalious died of alcoholism at 39 in 1964. Jacqueline Susann
knew that time was not on her side, and made the most of the remaining 12 years
of her life. Jackie wrote three #1 best-sellers and became an international
celebrity before dying of cancer at 56, in 1974.
After Story
Valley of the Dolls
sold more copies, owing to the decade-long onslaught of self-publicizing Susann,
unlike self-conscious and self-destructive Metalious. Regarding Susann’s
follow-up novel, The Love Machine,
Michael Korda recalled: “The book would have sold 100 thousand in hard back,
maybe, without the promotion. That’s a healthy figure, but it sold four times
that because of Jackie’s personal impact.”
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| Mia Farrow: "Maybe I'll make headlines someday!" |
However,
Peyton Place enjoyed a long shelf
life, from two hit movies, a daytime serial version, and especially the ‘60s TV
reboot: 5 years, airing 2 to 3 times a week, totaling over 500 episodes. The
show made stars of Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal, and lots of money for ABC and 20th
Century Fox—and not a dime for the estate of Grace Metalious. By contrast, Valley of the Dolls was the only hit film from Susann novels. Dolls, trashed at the time, gradually
became a camp classic, ála Mommie Dearest.
A television series was announced in 2012, only to be reminded by Jacqueline
Susann’s estate that Fox failed to exercise its right of first refusal. Somewhere,
Jackie and Grace had a heavenly chuckle over that payback to 20th
Century Fox.
The
film versions certainly helped keep the books and their authors alive in the
public’s memory. Despite their similar journeys, the following answers regarding
their legacy speak volumes about the core difference between the two women.
When
asked by an interviewer if her mega-seller Peyton
Place would be remembered in 25 years, Grace Metalious replied, “I doubt it
very much…oh heavens, no.”
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| Controversial even in death, some locals did not wantGrace Metalious buried in Gilmanton. |
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| Jacqueline Susann went out on top! |
When
asked about the lasting impact of her
books, Jacqueline Susann answered, whether with bravado or genuine self-confidence:
“I think I’ll be remembered as the voice of the 1960s, Andy Warhol, The
Beatles, and me…”
FYI: I put all the movie overflow on my public FB movie
page.