Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Woodyanders Sweet and naïve college grad Anne Welles (an appealing portrayal by Barbara Parkins), ruthlessly driven and ambitious singer Neely O'Hara (a gloriously histrionic Patty Duke), and the gorgeous, but untalented Jennifer North (the stunning Sharon Tate in an especially poignant role) all seek fame and fortune in show business only to be chewed up and spit out by the decadent fast line lifestyle they find themselves caught up in.Director Mark Robson treats the trashy material with admirably misguided sincerity and seriousness, thereby ensuring that this movie delivers a plethora of unintentional belly laughs, with Neely's training/climbing-up-that-ladder montage, the supposedly racy, but actually quite ridiculously tame French "art" film screening, and O'Hara's incarceration flashbacks at an asylum rating as the definite gut-busting highlights. Moreover, the shamelessly lurid script by Helen Deutsch and Dorothy Kingsley leaves no sleazy stone unturned: We've got everything from abortion to suicide to alcoholism and homosexuality to copious amounts of excessive pill-popping all present and accounted for in the delightfully lurid narrative. The game cast give it their proverbial all: Duke overemotes to the point where you swear that she's going to implode, Susan Hayward attacks her juicy role as bitter and aging Broadway veteran Helen Lawson with deliciously venomous gusto, Tony Scotti makes a likeable impression as dashing hunk Tony Polar, and Lee Grant lends sturdy support as Tony's protective sister Miriam. William H. Daniels' glossy widescreen cinematography provides an impressive vibrant and polished look. The lovably cruddy songs hit the catchy spot, too. A complete kitschy hoot and a half.

Wuchak Released in 1967 and based on Jacqueline Susann's novel, "Valley of the Dolls" is a soap opera about the negative side of showbiz in the mid-60s. Barbara Parkins stars as the ingénue from small town New England who moves to New York City and swiftly lands a job as a secretary at theatrical agency that represents an arrogant, aging performer (Susan Hayward). Paul Burke plays the suave agency son who takes interest in her while Patty Duke appears as a feisty, talented upstart, the rival of Hayward's character. Sharon Tate plays a statuesque beauty with limited acting aptitude while the sharp Lee Grant and stud-ly Tony Scotti play a sister/brother team. The three main protagonists eventually resort to prescription drugs to relieve their stress, particularly the barbiturates Seconal & Nembutal and various stimulants, which are the eponymous "dolls." The first 25 minutes are great, showcasing wintery New England landscapes and several curvy beauties in the Broadway scene. You can't beat the authentic mid-60's ambiance reflected in everything and everyone. From there, however, the movie settles into a salacious cautionary tale that relies on sentimental twaddle and hints of steamy sex to compensate for a relatively un-compelling story. Fans of soap operas will no doubt enjoy it more than I did.People criticize the movie on the grounds that it's "campy," but this is inaccurate. "Valley" is a totally serious (melo)drama with the occasional overacted histrionics, but it's not campy. If you want camp, see the non-sequel "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (1970), which is a satire scripted by none other than Roger Ebert.In an interview Patty Duke said that director Mark Robson treated the female actors like unintelligent bimbos, particularly Sharon Tate. Interestingly, Judy Garland was originally slated to play the roll played by Hayward, but Robson fired Garland for ironically turning up drunk. Duke also said she and her pals would occasionally order pizza and have a "Valley of the Dolls" night where they'd make fun of the movie. Sadly, Sharon Tate would be dead less than two years after the film's release, murdered by the Manson wackos in Los Angeles on August 9, 1969. The movie drives home its message well: Beauty is fleeting, money does not bring true happiness, drugs & drink are a dead end and showbiz fame can be a bitter pill; but one CAN escape if one chooses. I also like how the movie switches from New York City to California at the midway point, which keeps things fresh. Lastly, the entertaining bathroom catfight between Hayward and Duke is worth the price of admission.The film runs 123 minutes and was shot in Redding Center & New Haven, Connecticut; Manhattan & Katonah, New York; and Santa Monica, Malibu & Los Angeles, California.GRADE: B-

mark.waltz One of the funniest "bad movies" ever made, "Valley of the Dolls" is one of three Jacqueline Susann novels made into films, and without a doubt, the best. In fact, the other two ("The Love Machine" and "Once is Not Enough") pale in comparison to this, both in the history of their filming, and in the outrageousness of the plot line. It's a tale as old as time, a story of three struggling young women in New York City who will all find struggles as they are objectified, envied, turned into drunks and druggies, and like "Three on a Match", one will not survive, one will struggle to survive, and the third will find happiness through the old fashioned notions of what a woman should be. These three ladies are Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate, all talented in their own way, and while Parkins might be the brains of the trio and Tate the buxom stereotypical dumb sexpot, it's Duke who gets the majority of the attention. Coming off of winning an Oscar, a hit TV show, a fairly successful movie ("Billie"), Duke was the one who got the big build-up, although photographers took notice of Tate's beauty and "Peyton Place" fans flocked to see Parkins on the big screen. "Valley of the Dolls" is as scandalous as that New England small town, and set in the world of high fashion, advertising and the entertainment world, the Big Apple is not at all like that sleepy little town where every seemingly noble citizen had a scandal. Sure, the scandals here are present, but it's expected in a noisy city like New York where you can blend into the crowds to escape from notoriety. The women all end up in bad relationships, and one will find herself greatly abused by men, while one takes the desperate way out and the third realizes the only way she can escape a similar ending is to escape from it altogether.Then there's Susan Hayward's Helen Lawson, a Broadway star of the Ethel Merman dynamic who is resentful of the upstart Neeley O'Hara and has her one musical number cut from the show they are in together. This is based on an alleged (and disproven theory) of a story that happened between Merman and supporting player Betty Hutton years before (and could have conceivably have happened with any other major star as well), and in the case of Duke's Neeley, she turns to alcohol and drugs to escape from the pressures of a rising young musical actress on Broadway. Hayward is as bitchy as a Broadway diva can be, obviously scarred of losing her grasp as the leading star of the musical theater, and treats Duke with disdain from the moment they meet. But after making somewhat of a name for herself, Duke pulls out one last stop to get revenge on Hayward, and it is not without cost to either of them.This is filled with great bad dialog, a few songs (including a beautiful Burt Bacharach theme song sung by Dionne Warwick) and some moments of pure camp that audiences still treasure. Who can forget Duke's beads wrapping themselves into a pretzel while singing "It's Impossible", and the bad set of Hayward's "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in her one musical number where she proclaims a love of humanity but inspires nothing but hatred from co-stars and those in the theater community who know what a demanding diva she can be. I would have found it disconcerting to have seen Judy Garland in this part, as while she could have certainly been commanding, and had played a few tough broads before, none of her characters were ever as mean. It's been rumored that Susann wrote Neeley about her, which would have been strange if Garland had to take down Duke while playing a variation of her old pal Ethel Merman. As for Parkins and Tate, they have a more difficult task in playing characters not as colorful as Duke's extremely troubled Neeley. Parkins is smart, sensitive and unlucky in love, pretty without being a sexpot or brassy. She's by far the most likable of the three, and manages to make her character become human, not saintly, and sort of the protectress of the three. Tate finds out the hard way that being buxom and sexy isn't always a plus in getting ahead, because nobody takes her serious as a talent, thinks she's stupid, and eventually this only leads her to make a living with one item required: a body. Of the three, she is the saddest. Duke keeps falling down and getting up, yet never seeming to learn any lessons. When she ends up passed out in a seedy hotel, obviously having just been used for the most vile of street trash, it really is sad to see how far one person with so much potential can fall.So this is Susann's warning to young girls everywhere longing for a career in the bright lights of Broadway or the world premieres of a Hollywood movie: unless you really have what it takes to make a talent, try and think of a different way of making a living. While there are male characters here, they really are supporting, only bringing on the conflict or not being able to handle the neuroses of these three different women. This film was very bold in some of the subject matters it dealt with, including drug abuse, alcoholism, pornography and in the case of the man Duke ends up with, homosexuality. Hollywood had changed a lot since "Three on a Match", and even if that had the benefit of being made before the production code, it didn't have the social issues of the 60's to show the grittiness of life in the big city as "Valley of the Dolls" did 35 years later.

dglink Among the most legendary of trashy movies, "Valley of the Dolls" is also compulsively entertaining. Anne Welles leaves the pristine snow-covered village of Lawrenceville for the savage Broadway jungle in Manhattan. Based on the lurid best-selling novel by Jacqueline Susann, the film chronicles the rise and fall of three young women: Welles, played by Barbara Parkins; Neely O'Hara, played by Patty Duke; and Jennifer North, played by Sharon Tate. Evidently, life is easy street in New York, at least at first, because opportunities are thrown at their feet; secretaries with scant shorthand skills become hair-spray models, mediocre singers become sensations, and women with bodies become stars of French art films.Reportedly a roman-a-clef drawn from well known show business personalities, "Valley of the Dolls" is glossy, big-budget nonsense from director Mark Robson, who previously directed such decent films as "Von Ryan's Express," "Peyton Place," and "The Bridges at Toko-ri." Perhaps Robson thought lightening would strike twice, and he could fashion another critical hit like "Peyton Place" from another trashy novel like Grace Metalious's 1950's scandalous best seller. However, "Valley of the Dolls" is no "Peyton Place." While Robson drew excellent performances from Lana Turner and a distinguished cast in his earlier soap opera, he unleashes his cast, and they go over the top in "Valley of the Dolls." Although directing three Oscar-winning actresses (Susan Hayward, Lee Grant, and Patty Duke), Robson let them chew the scenery shamelessly. While the bitchy performances provide guilty entertainment, they are often risible. Hayward is Helen Lawson, a tough Broadway veteran, who leaves no survivors; Hayward's badly staged musical number pits her against an out-of-control mobile, and her wig-pulling duel with Duke is justifiably famous for campy hilarity. Duke overplays the bitchiness throughout, and her final scene is a histrionic masterpiece of bad acting. The flashbacks of Duke in a sanitarium will have viewers rolling, especially when her toe cuts through a sheet. Only Lee Grant retains her dignity and under-plays a small, thankless role. Meanwhile, Sharon Tate is lovely, but wooden, and Barbara Parkins and Paul Burke do little with what little they are given by the script.The film's budget was obviously generous, and the now-dated 1960's fashions, make-up, and hair styles could be studied and copied for period films set in that decade. Also dated and offensive are repeated references to gays as queers, fags, and faggots; but, in fairness, the all-white cast lacks other minorities to denigrate. Except for the title song sung by Dionne Warwick, the tunes are instantly forgettable, although a duet between recovering addict Duke and wheel-chair bound Tony Scotti is like something out of "Airplane." The dialogue is either intentionally or unintentionally funny at times, and the use of "dolls" to refer to pills sounds forced. Although Robson likely entertained fantasies of producing another soap opera masterpiece on the order of "Peyton Place" or "Imitation of Life," he instead left a camp classic that is a guilty pleasure for many.