Dollapalooza! Part Two: Exploring the “Valley Of The Dolls” (1967)

Get ready to "Sparkle, Neely, Sparkle" for Part Two of our special "Dollapalooza" tribute to the "Citizen Kane" of camp, 1967's "Valley of the Dolls."  

We start with the music. Andre and Dory Previn’s title theme? Gorgeous, melancholy, timeless. The rest? A tour of mid-century TV-variety vibes that never quite match the film’s ambition. From Patty Duke’s surprise dubbing and the myth of the star-making number to Judy Garland’s earlier pass at “I’ll Plant My Own Tree,” we map out how direction, staging, and label politics turned strong talent into strange cinema. Then we speed-run the plot to spotlight the beats everyone quotes: sparkle-fueled success, pills as propulsion, Malibu heartbreak, and the alleyway prayer that seals Neely O’Hara in pop memory.

The crown jewel is the powder-room showdown: Neely versus Helen, a wig in flight, and a reveal that undercuts its own insult with better hair. We explore on-set tensions, shortened fights, and how one choice can mute an intended humiliation. 

Beyond the memes, we honor the people behind the spectacle—Barbara Parkins stepping away from Hollywood, Patty Duke confronting bipolar disorder and later embracing the film’s queer fandom, and the lasting sorrow that frames Sharon Tate’s luminous performance. Flop or classic? The box office said hit; time crowned it the "Citizen Kane" of camp.

Hit play, share your spiciest Valley take, and if this dive made you laugh, wince, or queue the soundtrack, follow the show, drop a rating, and send us your scene of scenes. Your reviews are how we keep the lights—and the mobiles—spinning.

Episode artwork by the incomparable Glen Hanson  @instaglenhanson  https://share.google/VDg6borRTn0f4cYxq

To listen to Judy Garland's version of "I'll Plant My Own Tree" go to https://youtu.be/v_QuWLm-LOs?si=HmkOvf28DKSDVJD9

To watch "It's Impossible" with Patty Duke's vocals go to: https://youtu.be/_SH7Q-TNpp4?si=Okf-TAXHG5IHeWXZ

Links to Tony's website, and Brad's website at www.goinghollywoodpodcast.com

Follow us on Instagram @goinghollywoodpod

To watch "The True Story of the Barrymores," go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0CZTHYN6D/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

To watch Tony's WIRED video "Tech Support: Old Hollywood" go to https://youtu.be/6hxXfxhQSz0?si=TO4Xv6q87XhBnqDT

Reach us at goinghollywoodpodcast@gmail.com

Listen to our Going Hollywood Playlist

Podcast logo by Umeworks

Transcript

Tony Maietta:
Hello, I'm film historian Tony Maietta. 

Brad Shreve:

And I'm Brad Shreve, who's just a guy who likes movies. We discuss movies and television from Hollywood's golden age.

Tony Maietta:
We go behind the scenes and share our opinions too. 

Brad Shreve:

And of course, being the average guy, my opinions are the ones that matter. 

Tony Maietta:

As does your self delusion. Welcome to going Hollywood. All by myself. Don't wanna be. Oh, but when did. When did Cher get here? Cher, what are you doing here? Hey everybody, it's Tony.

Tony Maietta:
And yes, I am all by myself today. But I'm not really all by myself because you're here with me today. Thank you so much for joining me for part two of our Dollapalooza, our journey into the Valley of the Dolls. And before I go any further, I just want to say this will be interesting. This is kind of an experiment. I've never done this by myself before, so as Judy would say, it could be disastrous. But I don't think so. I'm here with you and I'm very excited about that.

Tony Maietta:
And I'm excited to enter. To re. Enter the Valley of the Dolls. To. To take that brutal climb up Mount Olympus. Oh no. Mount Everest. Get it right.

Tony Maietta:
Barbara Parkins. To the Valley of the Doles. So for those of you who perhaps didn't hear our episode last week, Part one. It's kind of a hint. You need part one before you. Part two. Anyway. And people are wondering just where the hell that co host of mine is.

Tony Maietta:
What's his name? I can't remember. His name. His name escapes me at the moment. Well, he left. He's left me. Yes, he picked up and moved to Spain. And that does not do wonders for my abandonment issues. But we'll talk about that later.

Tony Maietta:
But, yes, he will. He will be back. He will be back and joining us. So in the meantime, I have some wonderful co hosts join me over the next few weeks. So I'm very much looking forward to that. But today, however, it's just me abandoned in the Valley of the Dolls all by myself. But I'm not. Again, as I just said, I'm not.

Tony Maietta:
I'm with you. Right. I already said that. So, okay, on to Valley of the Dolls, Part 2. Dollapalooza. Now, last time when we were here standing on the edge of Mount Everest to reach into the Valley of the Doles, we were just peering in. Now we're going to climb down and take a look around. We're going to.

Tony Maietta:
We're going to talk about some scenes, some scenes that are particularly interesting, if that's the word. So we're going to talk about some scenes in the movie, and then we're going to talk about some scenes that took place when they were filming the scenes in the movie. So it should be fun. I guess we'll see. For. For those of you who are new to this podcast, thank you. I'm not usually alone. This isn't.

Tony Maietta:
This is a new thing. You're probably aware, though, for those of you who do listen, that I'm not a big fan of going plot point by plot point, scene by scene. You know, I figure if you're listening to this podcast, you've already watched the movie, right? I mean, come on. So what I thought I would do is discuss perhaps the most famous, or more exactly, more succinctly notorious scenes in this movie. How's that sound? I can sense you're all nodding your heads like, let's do that. That sounds great. Can we do that? Normally, this is where I would pause and wait for Brad to say some sarcastic remark to me. So I'm just pretend he's going to say it, and I'm just going to say, shut up, Brad.

Tony Maietta:
I just. We're just gonna go. We're gonna go for it. Here we go. I thought we would start with the songs because as I said last week, I always forget that this is a musical. The Valley of the Dolls is a musical. There are songs in Valley of the Dolls. There are five songs written by Andre and Dori Previn.

Tony Maietta:
Now, just a little background on Andre and Dori Previn. Andre Previn. No Slouch. Okay. Four Oscars. He had just won an Oscar before this film for scoring My Fair Lady. He worked at MGM for, I think, 16 years in the music department. So, I mean, he was a quite accomplished composer, Dory also an accomplished lyricist.

Tony Maietta:
So this. We're not talking about two people who didn't know what they were doing. Okay. After this, Dory would go on to write come Saturday morning from the film the Sterile Cuckoo, which is. I love that song. I love that movie. Before that, she had written you're going to hear from me from inside Daisy Clover, which has a lot of similarities to Valley of the Dolls, starring Neely wannabe Natalie Wood. But for some reason, like so many things in this film, somewhere along the line, the Previns jumped the track.

Tony Maietta:
Somewhere along the line. Their songs in this film are, with the exception of one which we talked about last week. We talked about the beautiful, haunting lyrical theme from Valley of the Dolls, which, for those of you who don't know, is most famously sung by Dionne Warwick. And it's all about getting off that damn merry go round that she's on. So it's a beautiful song. It's in culture. Everybody, I think everybody loves that song and knows that song. And then there's the other ones.

Tony Maietta:
The other ones, which are just. Yeah, they're just not the best songs in the world. But I just want to talk about a couple of them because a couple of them really have become almost mythic in Hollywood history. For of camp, they're just. We're climbing again, reclimbing the Mount Everest of camp today for the Valley of the Dolls. And so many of these songs have gone into camp legend. The first one I believe we should start with is It's Impossible. Well, it's impossible to talk about it's impossible without stating it's impossible to believe that this number would make Neely a star.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, come on. So in the film, It's Impossible takes place after Helen Lawson has tied a can to that broad's tail and. And kicked her out of her show. Suddenly, she gets a job on a telethon hosted by a strangely, strangely out of place Joey Bishop. Just one of the many interesting celebrity cameos in this film. And it's basically, she's performing on the horriest of show business venues, the telethon. And here's the thing, okay, here's the problem, actually, the song is not great, but worse than the song is Patty Duke's costume. Because what makes this song the reason why this song has become such a camp touchstone is because Patty Duke comes out in this casual kind of turtleneck type outfit, which is basically the designer William Trevilla's way of telling us that she's a poor struggling performer who can't quite afford the.

Tony Maietta:
The couture which is about to come. And that's fine, that's fine. But as the song starts and Patty Duke starts Neely, let's call her by the character name, Tony. And Neely starts her torso shifting and her arms swinging movements. Her beads. Well, her beads take on a journey of their own. Let me just say that her beads make their way across her torso like they were on a grand tour of Europe, eventually landing. Yes.

Tony Maietta:
At Neely's own personal Mount Everests. I can't say that they were. Basically, they're circling her breasts. Okay? That's what it is. They're looking for a place to land. And they do. But here's the problem. It's not just that the beads traveling around Neely's torso and ending up in very strange configurations, as I said, circling her breasts, going off to one side, going off to the other.

Tony Maietta:
It's the fact that they distract from the point of the scene, the focus of the scene. They become the point of the scene. The point of the scene isn't, wow, this great new star being launched on the public with this incredible performance. No, it's that these beads have a mind of their own. And that's the only thing we're watching now. Here's where a good director, hello, Mark Robeson, would say, cut. What the hell is up with those beads? Lose the beads. But no, but no.

Tony Maietta:
As we discussed in our last episode, a good director, Mark Robeson, was not. The fact that nobody said cut. What the hell is going on with those beads, is indicative of everything that is wrong with this movie. I mean, you can really boil it down to this one scene because the beads become such a focal point, if you'll pardon the pun, that when Theater a Go Go did their infamous send up of the Valley of the dolls in the mid-2000s, Kate Flannery, who played Neely in this production and who'd later go on to play Meredith in the Office. So that's who Kate Flannery is. She came on stage for the sequence with the beads draped around each individual breast and taped to her sweater with masking tape. Because everybody who watches this scene says, look, look, look at her beads, look at her beads. And that's the takeaway from the scene.

Tony Maietta:
And that's what's so sad. That's what's so frustrating. It's not, what a great song, what a great performance. Wow, this woman's really talented. It's what a great set of beads. The other thing about this particular song, this very, very convoluted, lyrically difficult song is of course, Patty Duke does not actually sing the song. She is dubbed by a singer named Gail Heidemann. And, you know, it's.

Tony Maietta:
Heidelman's version is perfectly serviceable, but it's hardly the type of star making performance that they want us to believe it is that this is Neely's star is born moment. It's okay. It's all right. Heidelman does actually. Heidelman does actually manage to capture Patty Duke's vocal cadences. I mean, that's what's really. That's kind of interesting to me. You know, Marni Nixon would do the same thing.

Tony Maietta:
Marni Nixon famously, you know, dubbed for Natalie Wood and West side Story, Deborah Carr in the King and I, Audrey Hepburn and My Fair Lady. And each time she was able to. This is the genius of Marni Nixon. She was able to transform her voice and her own personal vocal cadences and pronunciations to fit the actress she was dubbing. And it's a really remarkable art form. People don't get enough credit for their vocal dubbing so that it matches. I mean, she was. She had moderate, you know, levels of success.

Tony Maietta:
I happen to think she's incredibly successful sounding like Deborah Carr in the King and I. I think she's pretty good as Audrey Hepburn, too. Maybe not so much with Natalie Wood, but anyway, that's. We're not talking about Marty Nixon, we're talking about Gail Heideman. But here's the thing, and this is what happened frequently when they would do these musicals in the 60s. Patty Duke thought she was going to be doing her own singing because Patty Duke actually did that. Patty Duke was actually a singer. She could sing.

Tony Maietta:
She actually had a hit record in 1965 called Don't Just Stand There Now. It's hardly this kind of ballsy I Gotta Be Me kind of number. Like Impossible. Like it's Impossible is, you know, it's not that kind of anthem. It's pretty heavily manufactured and it's very Leslie Gore like. But it was a hit. Patty Duke had enough melody in her voice to be able to carry that off. But, you know, so she had a hit record.

Tony Maietta:
So it would kind of make sense that she would think, I've had a hit record. I Have. I have a history in the recording industry. I should probably. I will probably be recording my own songs for this musical. But no, and this is what's so amazing. Nobody told her that she was not going to record her own songs. She even trained to record these songs.

Tony Maietta:
Nobody told her she wasn't doing it until the time came to film it. You know, and you wonder why Patty Duke was so pissed off about this movie. I mean, come on. Geez. But, okay, if that wasn't amazing enough, here's something else for you. Hold on a minute. I'm gonna believe this. After Valley of the Dolls was released, Patty Duke got a little of her own back and recorded an album called can you guess? Patty Duke sings songs from Valley of the Dolls.

Tony Maietta:
You can't make this stuff up. I'm telling you, you can't make it up. So you can actually listen to Patty Duke's recording of It's Impossible and the theme from Valley of the Dolls. Yes, she also sings that. I think she also sings Come Live With Me. And yeah, a few more memorable air quotes, memorable songs from Valley of the Dolls. And of course, somewhere along the line, somebody had the really genius idea of taking Patty Duke's vocals of It's Impossible from her album and putting them up against the footage from Valley of the Doll. So if you go to YouTube and I'll leave the link in the show notes, you can actually see what Patty Duke.

Tony Maietta:
You can experience what Patty Duke actually singing It's Impossible was like. I'm not saying it's better. I'm not saying it's worse. It's authentic. Okay. I actually think it's a little bit better, but that's just all I'm saying. However, she also recorded the theme from Valley of the Dolls, and it. It really does sound like a bad drug trip.

Tony Maietta:
That's all I'm gonna say about that. But look it up on Spotify. Look it up on Spotify. I'll plant my own tree. Now, we talked a little bit about this in episode one, I'll plant my own Tree. Helen Lawson's big number from her Broadway show. What the does that mean? I'll plant my own tree. Where's she planting this tree? On the sound on the side of Mount Everest when she's going up to the Valley of the Dalls.

Tony Maietta:
What does it mean now? Okay, I can kind of get a metaphor here. Okay. I'm planting my own tree. I'm staking my claim. I'm here. World. Gangway, world. As I said, gangway, world.

Tony Maietta:
Get off of my Runway kind of song. All right, fine. If the song was a better song, I could kind of see that. You know, it's in the. It's in the. The. I would say the mood of a. Everything's Coming Up Roses is a good one.

Tony Maietta:
I would even say I don't ran in my parade type type of song. But here's the thing. What the hell Broadway musical is this that she's singing that song? I mean, it looks like more like a sequence from a bad 60s variety show. Okay? It's not. It is not a song that you would find in a Broadway musical. There's no. I mean, she's basically performing in one. Well, she's not in one.

Tony Maietta:
In one means her and the audience. That ain't it. There's a big frickin mobile in front of her of all these colors. What is with this damn mobile? That's basically upstaging her. No actress, certainly not Ethel Merman, would tolerate this mobile twirling around in front of her. This, this mid century ish, you know, 60s, swinging 60s mobile going around casting all these weird shadows on her face while she is selling the song to the back row. It was funny. I think even Bruce Valanche said in an interview, he said that that mobile would have lasted about five seconds with at La Mermaid before she'd say, get that fucking thing out of here.

Tony Maietta:
I'm not singing behind any goddamn mobile. It's just. It's so strange. These choices are so strange and they're what make this movie unintentionally funny. Unintentionally funny. This song is supposed to be. Oh, wow, look at this big. It's everything coming.

Tony Maietta:
Everything's coming up roses. Basically. That's what it is. It's supposed to be galvanizing. It's Helen Lawson, the first lady of Broadway. And you're just like, heh. And okay, now here's another thing about this song. And you have to have a little background about Susan Hayward.

Tony Maietta:
As we all know, Susan Hayward was not. If you listened to the episode last week, Susan Hayward was not originally cast. Was not the original choice for Helen Lawson. It was indeed. Yes, Judy Garland. Now this is interesting. First of all, Judy Garland. Judy Garland hated the song.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, are you surprised? She hated it. She wanted her good friend Bobby Cole to write an additional song. And she. She told Mark Robeson, and of course, being Mark Robeson, being, you know, in Patty Duke's words, the meanest son of a bitch she ever kn. Totally dissed it, totally dismissed it. No, we're singing this song. Judy Garland recorded it. It's available.

Tony Maietta:
Yes. Again on YouTube. And if I remember, with all these links, with everything I'm doing this week on my own, I will put it in the show notes. And as you can imagine, 1967. Judy died two years later. Her voice was not in the best of shape at this point, but she could still energize a number if she wanted to. All you got to do is listen to her at home at the palace concert, which she made right after she was fired from Valley of the Dolls. It was really kind of her last big comeback at the palace in 67.

Tony Maietta:
And ironically, this is where at the palace is where she wore the famous pantsuit that was gifted to her by Travia from Valley of the Dolls. It was at that concert. So anyway, you listen to that album, cd, music, whatever you want to call it. I don't know if it's available streaming. I know it's on YouTube. She's shaky. Her voice is shaky, but she can still sell a song, baby. She comes out there and sings, I feel a song coming on.

Tony Maietta:
And she lays them to the back row of the balcony. Okay, so Judy's version of I'll Plant My Own Tree is hardly her best, but she sells the song. Unfortunately, that's not the case in the film. Now, believe it or not, like Patty Duke, Susan Hayward could actually sing. She could. She did her own singing in a film called I'll Cry tomorrow in the 50s. And she's. She's pretty good.

Tony Maietta:
She plays a Broadway actress named Lillian Roth. And she. It's a wonderful movie. She's wonderful in it and she sings and it's great. She's got a great smoky, bluesy kind of voice. But she herself said, look, I know I'm not going to have enough time. I wasn't the first choice for this film. I'm not going to have enough time to do the vocal training that's required for me to sing this subpar song anyway.

Tony Maietta:
So it's not. So she's like, I'll be dubbed. I'll be dubbed. And she's dubbed by a wonderful singer named Margaret Whiting. In the film, Margaret Whiting was a. Was one of the Whiting sisters. She did some wonderful recordings in the 50s and 60s. So wonderful singer, wonderful singer.

Tony Maietta:
So she was dubbed. And even when she was. Susan Hayward was doing dubbing her own voice, like in I'll Cry Tomorrow. Because that's what you do. You pre record a song and then when you're Filming it, you lip sync to your own recording. So even when she was lip syncing to her own voice, she wasn't the world's best lip syncer. And, you know, there's a few moments, and I'll plant my own tree where her mouth is still open but the sound has stopped. So you're like, okay.

Tony Maietta:
Another very distracting thing about this sequence and that why people laugh at the sequence besides the damn mobile, is the fact that Susan Hayward's body language is very awkward. The way she's holding herself, I heard somebody say once her upper torso is in one zip code and her hips are in another. Well, Susan Hayward had a car accident when she was a younger young woman and she had mobility issues. She had mobility moving. So if you ever watch a Susan Hayward movie musical and there are a couple Susan Hayward musicals, her movement is very limited. It's very concise. She doesn't do a lot of moving. But when you have a song that is modeled on something like Everything's Coming Up Roses, or if we're gonna go to the Judy Garland analogy, I could go on singing.

Tony Maietta:
You can imagine that song is designed for movement, you know, for being all over the stage, for throwing your hands up, just like Judy would do. So the fact that Susan Hayward kind of stiffly stands there in this weird contort portion of her body, belt in the hell air quotes, belt in the hell out of the song, is kind of funny. It's, it's, it's unintentionally funny. I just. There's so many things wrong with this sequence with this song, you know, it's just, it's hysterical. So another thing that's kind of strange and ironic about this, the performance of I'll Plant My Own Tree is the fact that although it is singer Margaret Whiting in the movie, so when you're watching the movie Valley of the Dolls, the voice you're hearing coming out of Susan Hayward coming out of Helen Lawson is Margaret Whiting. However, like Dionne Warwick, Margaret Whiting's record company wouldn't allow her to appear on a rival label. So the soundtrack from Valley of the Dolls features a person named Eileen Wilson singing this song.

Tony Maietta:
So you basically have Eileen Wilson standing in for Margaret Whiting standing in for Susan Hayward pretending to be Helen Lawson. Did I lose you? Have you followed me so far? Okay, I want to talk about a couple more. We're going to talk about a couple more scenes, but before we do that, I do want to say we got a couple reviews and I do. I really trying to make it. I want to make it a point of talking about the reviews when we get them because we're so grateful. I know Brad feels this way. I can hear him out in Spain saying, yes, I do, I do, I do. So when we get these reviews, I really like to.

Tony Maietta:
I'm really going to make a point of saying thank you to the people who did it and giving everybody a shout out because as Brad has said many times, this is how we get paid. We get paid in this kind of thing with these reviews. So there's. We got i3 new ones that I found and I didn't check spot. I did check Spotify because I just recently found out you, you could leave reviews on Spotify on each individual episode. So I want to, I just want to give a shout out to some people I want to give a shout out to. And his name, the person's name is Fan o Disney. Hi, Fan o Disney.

Tony Maietta:
And Fan o Disney said, I just found out about this podcast and I just listened to the episode on A Star Is Born and it was pretty great. Can't wait to hear more. Can't wait to listen more. So thank you, Thano Disney. I love the fact that you listened to the Star Is Born. Star is Born was one of our second or third episodes we did way back and we talked about, I'm gonna do a little plug here. We talked about all four versions of A Star Is Born and that includes the very first unofficial version called what Price Hollywood? And here's what's amazing to me. You should listen to this because we talked about four movies in that episode.

Tony Maietta:
Four movies and iconic movies, mythic movies. Hello, A Star Is Born. We talked about it and its effects in Hollywood and we did it in under an hour and 15 minutes. Now I can't get it through a fricking movie from 1967 without splitting it into two parts. I don't know. So clearly we need some editing here as I go on and on and on. But anyway, thank you, Fano Disney. Maybe we'll have to do a Disney film because you're clearly a fan of Disney.

Tony Maietta:
That would be wonderful. I appreciate that so much. We also got A review from Be Bath 7 and Be Bath 7 said that the podcast, it's like chatting with two friends. The topics are fun and I consistently talk back when I'm passionately agree or disagree. That's. I love that because I do the same thing when I'm listening to a podcast. When I'm any. Even if I'm listening to a book on audible or something.

Tony Maietta:
I will talk back or I will, you know, especially if I disagree. So thank you. And, you know, the. The thing about. That's kind of our goal. That's my goal. Whenever I do anything related to film, I want to talk about movies and TV and whatever I'm doing, whether it be this podcast, whether it be a documentary, anything. That's my goal.

Tony Maietta:
That it's like, it's conversational, that it's. That is a conversation between two people. It's like you and I are going out and having a drink and we're talking about this movie we just saw. So thank you. I love the fact that that's the impression you got, because that's the impression we want to give and really, really appreciate that. And last but certainly not least, a big shout out to Caliph Brett, who left us a very lovely review with the title Been here since the beginning. Now he's talking about the beginning of the podcast, obviously, or maybe not, but anyway, this is what. This is what Caliph Brett said.

Tony Maietta:
He said the podcast keeps getting better. I've watched a few movies like they Shoot Horses, don't they? And revisited some episodes of Classic tv. Because the discussion between Tony and Brad. Because of the discussion between Tony and Brad. I'll add A Place in the sun, and that's the film. I'll add A Place in the sun to the list of essential Elizabeth Taylor films. Someone needs to get over the fact that it was directed by George Stevens. She.

Tony Maietta:
He means Elizabeth Taylor. She's never been more luminous than in that film. And her chemistry with Montgomery Clift is off the charts. So thank you, Caliph Brett. I hear ya. You know, a couple episodes back, we did kind of a take on the Wired interview I did a few months ago, and Brad wanted me to expand on the Elizabeth Taylor talking more about Elizabeth Taylor and wanted some recommendations for Elizabeth Taylor films. And, you know, I could kick myself because I didn't say A Place in the Sun. And of course, I recommend A Place in the Sun.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, if you want to see Elizabeth. I mean, at the height of her youthful beauty. The height of her youthful beauty. Gorgeous, Gorgeous. And you know her. Her chemistry with Montgomery Clift, they became lifelong, dear, dear friends when they were making this film. They made two more. She.

Tony Maietta:
They were, yes, they loved each other very, very deeply. And you can see that their chemistry is unbelievable in this film. This film is basically features the two most beautiful people on the planet at that time in love with each other. And George Stevens, the director, who When I'm with Brad shall not be named because Brad has had bad reactions to two George Stevens films. George Stevens very famously was very famous for his close ups. He started in silent film and the close ups of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the sun are legendary. They're so beautiful. So anyway, yes, thank you so much, Caliph Bratt, for mentioning that place, for letting me talk about A Place in the sun, because I did want to mention it and I forgot and I kicked myself for it.

Tony Maietta:
And this is for Brad, if he's listening. We are going to be talking about another George Stevens film very shortly, but not with Brad. Burn me once, burn me twice and it's not going to happen a third time. We will be coming up in a couple weeks with a very special co host and we will discuss one of my very favorite movies directed by George Stevens. So that's coming up. So anyway, those are some of the reviews we got and wonderful ratings. Again, again, again, thank you so much everybody for taking the time out of your schedule to not only listen to us, but then to rate and review us. I mean, you know, you don't know us from Adam, what the hell? But we so appreciate it.

Tony Maietta:
I appreciate it. And I really want to say thank you so very much. Now back to our continuing story of Valet of the Dolls. Okay, so I think at this point what we need to do. I'm going to talk about some scenes and what we need to do is give a brief synopsis of the film because Brad gave one in the last episode. But I don't. That's back when the world was young and I have no idea what he said. So I'm going to do this.

Tony Maietta:
I'm going to give you my brief synopsis of the film. Now, I don't know how many of you have ever heard of five minute Hamlet. Well, this is three minute Jackie, Suzanne, Three minute Valley of the Dolls. Okay, so we said this film is basically about three women. Hollywood loves stories about three women. Letter to Three Wives, which actually started out as four wives but it wasn't working. So they cut a wife and boom. Huge success.

Tony Maietta:
Three coins in a fountain Lay girls Three on a match. Hollywood loves three women. Three women. There you go. I forgot about that one. So here we are, we have three women. Here we have Ann Wells, Jennifer north and Neely o'. Hara.

Tony Maietta:
Now Jennifer and Neely are in show business and Ann just wants to get the hell out of Lawrenceville, her hometown. Can you blame her? Actually, it's quite beautiful. They all come together in this theater in New York City. And they're in a show where Jennifer and Neely are appearing with Helen Lawson, the barracuda. Ann comes into Helen's dressing room and remarks on Neely's incredible singing voice. And Helen Lawson proceeds to tie a can to that broad's tail. And she's out of the show. Then we get a series of montages and we realize, oh, we've moved ahead in time.

Tony Maietta:
Jennifer has fallen in love with handsome but tragic singer, lounge singer Tony Poehler, who has an enigmatic older sister named Miriam. Ann has inexplicably gone from secretary to high fashion model, and Neely has become a huge star in movie musicals. There's only one problem. In order for her to get up at 5am and sparkle, neely, sparkle. She gotta take dolls, the pills. And you can imagine what happens. She gets addicted. In the meantime, Tony Poehler takes a spill on the steps of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and it's discovered that he has a rare genetic disease which puts him in a sanitarium.

Tony Maietta:
His sister Miriam decides to go heat up some lasagna and tells Jennifer that in order to support Tony in the sanitarium, she has to start doing French art films. Or as Neely more charmingly puts them in nudies. Nudies, Nudies. In which she has to show her boobies, Boobies, boobies. Now, at the same time that Anne is becoming an unexpected high fashion model, she falls in love with her boss, lion, and then she falls out of love with lion, and then she falls back in love with lion, and then she falls into the Pacific Ocean high on dolls. After she regurgitates some Malibu water, she decides she has to get away from everyone and everything. Meanwhile, Neely marries Mel and then divorces Mel and then marries Ted Casablanca because he's not a fag and she's the dame that can prove it. Then she comes home one night to find Ted Casablanca cavorting naked in her swimming pool with another woman, okay? Whereby she proceeds to throw every gay slur she can think of at him, as well as a few bottles.

Tony Maietta:
So I need to take a little side note here, okay? Now, in the novel, as you can imagine, Neely comes home and indeed finds Ted Casablanca cavorting in her pool with another man. But the producers of the film weren't quite brave enough. At this point in the film, in the history of Hollywood, they weren't quite brave enough. I mean, Virginia Woolf had only been the year before that kind of broke apart the pca. So the producers weren't quite brave enough to do that to have a homosexual encounter in a film. So they made the very odd decision to substitute a heterosexual scene for a homosexual. So yeah, that's right. They made the very strange choice to substitute a heterosexual scene for what was originally a homosexual scene, but keep the same homosexual dialogue.

Tony Maietta:
Hey, you heard me. In the meantime, Jennifer has become a big air quotes art film star, but suddenly discovers she has breast cancer. And since she's only a body and has no talent, she swallows some dolls and ends her life. Miriam is apparently still heating up the lasagna when this happens. Back in Hollywood, Neely has pretty, pretty much gone off the rails. She knows she's showing up late to set, she's ripping wigs off. She has this thing about wigs. She's slugging directors.

Tony Maietta:
She's just. She's just basically become a pretty. A nightmare. So she gets drummed out of Hollywood and she decides to go crawling back to Broadway. But first, before she does that, she does a little stint in a very scary 60s version of the Betty Ford center. Because Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope. But unfortunately, her newfound sobriety does not last. She gets drunk on her opening night and her understudy, who looks alarmingly like a young Barbra Streisand, goes on in her place.

Tony Maietta:
Neely spends her opening night in a bar. She then stumbles out of the bar into an alley where she proceeds to call out for help to Mel, Jennifer Ann lion, and finally, at her wits end and on her knees to God, reminding God that she is, after all, Neely o' Hara Ann, fed up with lion, with dolls, with showbiz in general, returns to Lawrenceville where Lion meets her and finally, finally, finally asks her to marry him. She turns him down, however, because she'd rather go for a walk in snow in her flats. And that, folks, is Valley of the Dolls. A synopsis you won't find on IMDb however, I left out a couple. I left out one very important scene I want to talk about, okay? Because it's. It's the ultimate scene. It's the ultimate scene when we were talking about in our last episode when Brad was talking about never having seen Valley of the Dolls, but having heard about the famous confrontation in the bathroom with the wig in the toilet.

Tony Maietta:
It's the most famous scene in Valley of the Dolls and it must be addressed, it must be talked about. So if you haven't for some reason watched Valley of the Dolls, please go back and watch and see how close my synopsis was to what really happens in the film. I think you'd be kind of a mazed. And you can see those iconic scenes of sparkle, Neely, sparkle. You can see Barbara Parkins tripping along Malibu beach and falling into the ocean, swallowing a. A mouthful of the Pacific Ocean. And of course, Sharon Tate, Jennifer North's very, very touching and very moving final. Her death scene when she swallows the pills.

Tony Maietta:
So the confrontation. Now, remember way back in the beginning when the world was young and we said that Helen had had Neely thrown out of her Broadway show when she was a nobody because she was threatened by this great talent. I know. Well, apparently, many years later, she's still harboring that grudge, and so is Neely. So I'm gonna set the scene, okay? It's the out of town tryout. The big. The big opening night out of town of Helen Lawson's latest show. And Neely has been told not to go to the show, don't go to the party.

Tony Maietta:
But of course, she's Neely o'. Hara. She's gonna do what she wants to do. So she shows up. Helen, for some reason, suddenly gets shy and decides, I got to go to the john and I'll just wait this out. And of course, Neely follows her in. And that's where the confrontation begins. So there's some interesting things about this scene.

Tony Maietta:
As you can imagine, this scene was what everybody wanted to see, okay? The confrontation not only between Neely and Helen, but between Susan Hayward and Patty Duke. Now, there were. There have been reports that think you look, the set was a mess. The set was a nightmare for so many people. You had Mark Robeson right there screaming at everybody with a stopwatch, telling him to do it faster, do it faster. But there was a little tension between Susan Hayward and Patty Duke. For whatever reason. For whatever reason.

Tony Maietta:
So the set that day was packed, packed with people. The only people in the scene are the. The ladies room attendant and Neely and Helen. That's it. But the set was packed with everybody. Barbara Parkins was there. Sharon Tate was there. Paul Burke was there.

Tony Maietta:
They were all there. They wanted to see this. So the original idea of the scene was. First of all, the scene was much longer. Originally, when it was originally written and filmed, the original idea was when Neely does indeed pull the wig off of Helen Lawson, that Helen was going to be bald or nearly bald. Think about Shirley MacLaine in the last part of Postcards from the Edge after she has her car accident and Meryl or Suzanne Meryl goes to visit her in the hospital, and she's there without a wig on. And she looks. She has little wisps of hair, but she's basically bald.

Tony Maietta:
That was the idea. Okay, you rip the wig off, and you got Helen Lawson bald. That's pretty humiliating to a woman like Helen Lawson Garland. When they were talking about this with Judy Garland, allegedly, there are reports that she was on board with that. Okay, you go. You go, Judy. Okay, if you are, that's great. That's the way it should be.

Tony Maietta:
Hayward, however, once Judy was gone and Hayward took over the role, refused. She refused to appear on screen looking like she was bald. She also refused a gray wig underneath the auburn wig. She wanted to have her own hair, dyed platinum. Okay, so think about this for a minute. She has her own platinum hair, full head of hair underneath a full head of auburn hair. So when Patty Duke rips off the auburn wig, it reveals this gorgeous head of dyed platinum hair, and it absolutely destroys the effect. Patty Duke even said this.

Tony Maietta:
Patty Duke said, I pull off her wig, and the hair under the wig looks better than the wig does. It's insane. And this is again where a director needs to step in and say, no, Susan, I'm sorry. God love ya. The point of the scene is lost if Neely rips off Helen's wig to expose an even more beautiful head of platinum hair. I guarantee you, William Wilder would have done that. Billy Wilder would have done that. Cukor would have done that.

Tony Maietta:
Robeson didn't care. He was more concerned about the scene, the timing of the scene, and getting it cut down shorter. Oh, God. So here's the deal. Here's the deal. That's the first thing. First of all, you're pulling off a wig and exposing a beautiful head of hair that nobody should be ashamed of. It actually looks better than the wig.

Tony Maietta:
Secondly, what's the big deal? They're all wearing wigs. When you do that, you think Patty Duke is wearing a wig. All these women are wearing wigs. So to pull off a wig and then say, oh, my God, she wears a wig, well, so are you, girl. I mean, what's the big deal? It makes no sense. Another reason why this film is unintentionally funny. The fight scene was originally longer, but there was another problem with the fight scene. First of all, we never really understand why Helen has such animosity towards Neely.

Tony Maietta:
I mean, you know, she. If anything, she should be saying, I'm sorry I kicked in my show. But, okay, we'll. We'll have to suspend our disbelief by that. We understand that Neely is probably pissed. But it has been a few years. So we're not sure what Helen's beef is. Neely, okay, we haven't been given any information about these two women meeting or having any kind of confrontation or discussion about what happened way back.

Tony Maietta:
Were supposed to think years ago when Helen fired Neely from her show. I guess we're just supposed to think this animosity has stewed with them, stewed inside them all these years. So maybe that's why it explodes in this scene. So as I said, the fight scene was originally longer. And Patty Duke said that she felt no animosity towards Susan Hayward, that this was a manufactured thing, but there was tension. And here's the thing. Patty Duke, though she was barely five feet tall, was incredibly strong. She had done the fight scene with Ann Bancroft every night for years in the Miracle Worker.

Tony Maietta:
She was a very strong woman. So apparently when they first shot it, she reached up to Hayward to grab for the wig and she knocked Hayward over and Hayward hit her head. All right, so we got a problem here. She was tended to by the studio doctor and was deemed okay and left for the day. So when they came back to refilm it, first of all, you can imagine that the word spread very quickly that, you know, basically Patty Duke laid, Helen, laid Susan Hayward on the ground during their fight scene. The fight was shortened to avoid any of that stuff. So the fight happens very fast. You know, they have the words, they have Susan Hayward's famous, now I get out of my way because I got a man waiting for me.

Tony Maietta:
And that's when the fight starts. And the next thing you know, the wig is off. Susan Hayward grabs her beautiful head of platinum hair and screams. And Neely runs to the john, to the stall, opens it and tries to flush the wig, but the wig won't flush. The wig will not flush. So she throws it back over the stall. It lands on the floor in a wet heap, nearly runs out. And Susan Hayward is left with the dilemma of leaving this party.

Tony Maietta:
Helen is. I gotta use the characters names. Helen is left with the dilemma of leaving this party with her pride intact. So she grabs a scarf from around her neck, wraps it around her gorgeous head of platinum hair and makes her exit. The next scene, of course, is the repercussions of this. And it's Helen with lion and Lion's boss talking about what a mess Neely is. And Helen shows a little sympathy for Neely. She says she's got talent.

Tony Maietta:
Really? We've just watched and now you're Sticking up for she's got talent. But she'll destroy herself. She'll destroy herself with the pills, with the dolls. Meanwhile, she's saying that she's knocking back glass after glass of champagne. But hey, Hollywood in the 60s. So that's the iconic fight scene with the wig. Yeah. Telling it.

Tony Maietta:
It doesn't seem. It seems a little bit like what? That's it. But. But the, the story behind it and the energy it has is just. It's incredible. It's an incredible scene to watch. And yeah, it's just. It's one of the more amazing scenes.

Tony Maietta:
So the other scenes in this film, I think that I just want to mention briefly is the Sparkle, Neely, sparkle scene. Because this was the scene that all the actresses who tested for Neely did. And as I said before, every single screen test these actresses did was so much more nuanced, so much more effective than what eventually ended up on the screen. And it's a really sad thing. So I feel like, you know, if you really want to see what valuable dolls could have been, go watch the screen Test. They're on YouTube and you can really see that these actresses were not. They weren't. They weren't dopes, they weren't stupid.

Tony Maietta:
They were just being directed. They weren't being directed. They were just left out to dry. And unfortunately, that's what happened. So Valley of the Dolls is wrapped. Finally, this movie is over and it's in post production. And there were a couple of things that happened which should have been a sign that maybe things aren't so great. On July 21, during the post production period of the film, producer David Weispart died while playing golf with Mark Robeson.

Tony Maietta:
I'm thinking you might want to check yourself there. And maybe not necessarily the best omen for this film, but anyway, the film was set to premiere and it was going to premiere, had a world premiere, not just in a theater in Los Angeles or New York. It was going to have its world premiere in Venice, Italy, aboard an Italian ocean liner with every single one of the stars in attendance. Patty Duke, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward, Barbara Parkins, all there. It was scheduled to have seven screenings on this luxury liner, the Princess Italia, en route to Miami, where it would eventually have its US premiere on November 28th. But there was a problem. How did you guess there was a problem? Halfway through the screening, there were sound problems. The sound speeded up, it slowed down, the film jumped.

Tony Maietta:
Apparently halfway through the screening, Jacqueline Suzanne jumped up, pointed at the screen and said, they've ruined my book. And stormed out. Not the best omen for a healthy film. So the film was released and yes, it was indeed universally panned to a, to a, to a review. There was one good review of this film in the LA Times, if you can believe that. The LA Times gave it a good review and said, you know, mark your calendars for Patty Duke's Best Actress Oscar. Nobody else felt that way. Even though it was universally panned, the film was a huge box office hit.

Tony Maietta:
As you can imagine, all the publicity about this movie, all the build up to this movie, people wanted to see it. They wanted to see the scandalous book on film. It earned $50 million on a budget of 5 million, which equates to about 422 million today. By 1968, it was Fox's biggest box office hit. That wasn't a roadshow ever. Sound of Music was a roadshow. We talked about roadshows when we were talking about Mad Mad, Mad Mad World. This was just a regular release and it was their biggest hit ever.

Tony Maietta:
So there's that. But the reviews, the reviews, the reviews, they were just scathing. Patty Duke, as you can imagine, came off the worst. Just people just decimated Patty Duke. Parkins and Tate were referred to as mannequins. And that Parkins expression did not change at all. Hayward actually came off the best. She had only four scenes though, although one critic said that she didn't remind him so much of Ethel Merman as she did of Susan Hayward.

Tony Maietta:
So the legacy, the legacy of Valley of the Dolls. What happened to these people after Valley of the Dolls premiered? Well, Tony Scotti, I think we said before, never made another film. He made one more appearance as an actor in an unaired TV pilot. He later had a mildly successful singing career and produced films in the 80s. Paul Burke appeared in the Thomas Crown Affair the following year. And then he continued to do supporting roles in, in films and on tv. Now let's talk about the ladies. What happened to the ladies? Well, after the filming of Valley of the Dolls ended and the film was released, Parkins went back to Peyton Place and she was actually.

Tony Maietta:
There was talk of a sequel to Valley of the Dolls before. Beyond Valley of the Dolls, there was talk of another sequel involving Anne. And she waited. She was waiting for that sequel. And while she was waiting for that sequel to happen, she turned down Love Story. Now that's a bitter pill to take, a bitter doll to swallow, if you ask me. So she. What happened was that Mia Farrow really became.

Tony Maietta:
With Rosemary's Baby, released the same year as Valley of the Dolls, Mia Farrow really became the huge star that come out of Peyton Place. You know, Barbara Parkins was definitely the hot property in Peyton Place when it was airing. But then Mia kind of took over the film career that Barbara Parkins envisioned for herself. She did a few more films, and she was very shaken by what happened to Sharon Tate. And because she was very close with Sharon Tate and she left Hollywood and moved to London, and she pretty much just lived her life in London. She was an artist, and she divorced herself from Hollywood, kind of like Ann Wells did Patty. Well, okay. Patti was indeed able to make the transition to adult roles, and ironically, her personal life began to unravel, not unlike Neely o', Hara's, but with Patty, besides the drugs, it was a mental disorder.

Tony Maietta:
It was indeed her undiagnosed at the time, bipolar disorder. And she got a very, very bad reputation in Hollywood. She won an Emmy Award for a film, a TV movie called My Sweet Charlie, in which she gives the oddest acceptance speech in Emmy history. And by the way, she's sitting next to Desi Arnaz Jr. And people who listen to our episode on the Addams Family. This was about the time they were dating and she got pregnant, and she wasn't sure if he was the father or if John Astin was the father. So what's amazing about Patty Duke, though, is that she was able to come to terms with what was going on with her. She wasn't just going to let it go.

Tony Maietta:
She actually came to terms with. With what was going on in her life. And she was one of the very first celebrities to do so. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982, and she wrote a wonderful book that I highly, highly recommend called Call Me Anna, in which she talks about her childhood, what the Rosses, her managers, did to her when she was growing up, dealing with all of her issues, with her mental health instability, up to her diagnosis of bipolar. And she became a champion for research, as Mary Tyler Moore did her diabetes. Petty Duke did for the fight against bipolar disorder. And most interestingly, she eventually came around to embrace Valley of the Dolls. Now, I think this is remarkable.

Tony Maietta:
Think about this for a woman, this woman pinned all of the hopes of her future career as an adult film actress on this role of Neeli o'. Hara. She was pretty much left out to dry after this film was out. And she was. She was a joke. She was a joke. But near the end of her life, she realized what joy, perverse joy, maybe, but what joy this film gave to people Primarily gay men. And she really wanted to give back to the gay community.

Tony Maietta:
She said many times the she felt the love from the gay community through all of her struggles from the Patty Duke show all the way up until the 80s. And she felt that love and she wanted to give it back. So that's when she decided she was not going to run away from this anymore. She was really going to embrace this. And that's the story of Patty Duke. You know, she came to terms with her demon, she came to terms with her life, terms with what was going on in her life. And she unfortunately died in 2016, much too young. She is a true icon.

Tony Maietta:
I am, will always be a big, big Patty Duke fan. I think what she went through in her life from a child up until the end of her life is inspirational and how she dealt with it. And finally, this is tough. We have to talk about what happened to Sharon Tate. I don't want to dwell on it too much because it's too tragic and too sad. But I think, I can't help but feel that one of the reasons for the fascination of this film is because of what happened to Sharon Tate. I can remember as a kid hearing the title Valley of the Dolls and in the same breath someone saying, oh, Sharon Tate, the tragedy of Sharon Tate. And I believe what happened to Sharon Tate gave this film a very strange aura, if you will.

Tony Maietta:
Gave it a, a flavor that it would not necessarily have had. And for those of you who don't know, on the evening of August 9, 1969, four members of the Charles Manson family broke into Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski's rented house at 10050 Salio Drive in Benedict Canyon and brutally murdered an eight month pregnant Sharon Tate and four other people. It's truly, it was a truly a horrific, horrific moment in Hollywood. It changed Hollywood in ways that reverberate to this day. And what it did was it also, it also robbed us of a beautiful, angelic, otherworldly human being that was Sharon Tate. So what do you think about Valley of the Dolls? What do you think of all of this? I want you to email us, I want you to email us@goinghollywoodpodmail.com and give us your thoughts, give us your suggestions. You know, Valley of the Dolls, this film, even though I've been wanting to do it for a year, was a suggestion by one of our listeners and I thank you so much. And we're going to find your name.

Tony Maietta:
Brad has it somewhere in his belongings in Spain. And we're going to thank you for that. But before I go, I do want to say one thing. Now there is such a thing. And Barbara Parkins pretty much propagates this of the Curse of the Valley and the Dolls, the people who were involved in this film. The similarities between the major characters and the actresses are pretty interesting. So stay with me for a minute here. Sharon Tate.

Tony Maietta:
We all talked. We just talked about the tragic end of Sharon Tate. And how does Jennifer north end in this film? She kills herself. She ends up dead. Parkins. Barbara Parkins turned her back and left Hollywood, as did Ann Wells. Patty Duke had the same kind of trajectory as Neely o' Hara did, but Patty Duke was able to pull it back and to get control of her demons. But still, the years after Valley of the Dolls were very similar to what Neely o' Hara was going through.

Tony Maietta:
And finally, Jacqueline Suzanne, Jacqueline Suzanne, the woman who started this all on a promise to God. Because in 1962, Jacqueline Suzanne was diagnosed with breast cancer and she underwent a radical mastectomy at that time. She made a promise to God that if he would give her 10 more years, she would become the best selling author in the world. Well, she lost that battle with cancer in 1973 when she discovered it had returned and she died in 1974. And what happened in 1974? The Guinness Book of World Records named Valley of the Dolls the best selling novel of all time. So say what you want about Jacqueline Suzanne and her magnum opus, Valley of the Dolls. And that's exactly the point. Say what you want, because we're still saying it, we're still talking about it 50 years after the book and the movie came out.

Tony Maietta:
And, you know, it's interesting because this book, this movie, they're just a part of our cultural fabric as Americans, as people, as moviegoers. And I think that's pretty cool. You know, not every film has to be Citizen Kane, okay? There are some films that don't have to quite reach that level, but they can be fun and they can be trashy and they can be bitchy and they can be, yes, campy. And they can just be a really, really good time. And to me, that's Valley of the Dolls. Valley of the Dolls actually is like Citizen Kane. It is the Citizen Kane of camp. And I will take that any day.

Tony Maietta:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was a lot. That was a lot of Valley of the Dolls. I for one, am pretty exhausted from this climb up Mount Everest. It was a brutal climb, but along with you beside me, it was a hell of a lot of fun. I miss my co host, but he is getting settled in Spain and he will be back in a few weeks when he's ready to go again. In the meantime, as I've said before, it won't be just me. This was an experiment and you'll have to let me know how the experiment went. You know, text me, email me.

Tony Maietta:
I just told you what the email was. It will also be in the show notes. I will have some fabulous guest co hosts with me for the next few weeks talking about some movies that I love and just helping me out until Brad comes back. So we have that to look forward to. And as Brad always says, you know, we love having you with us and if you could possibly take the time to rate or review us, you know, let us know what you think of the podcast, give us ideas, suggestions on what you'd like us to talk about, that would be fabulous. Just go to wherever you hear podcasts, Apple podcasts, Spotify. You can leave reviews on Spotify. As I found out.

Tony Maietta:
We'd really appreciate it. As I said before, you know, this is a labor of love for us and that's the way that we get our gratification is hearing from you. We don't get paid for this. This is how we get our gratification. This is how we get our sustenance. So thank you very much. Last for now. Well, I guess it's time to tie a can to this podcast tale.

Tony Maietta:
And how the hell am I going to end this all by myself? I guess there's only one thing left to say. So until next week, let's not say goodbye. Let's just say get out of my way because I got a man waiting for me. Goodbye, everybody. That's all, folks.