She finds work as a secretary to Henry Bellamy, an entertainment lawyer, and befriends Neely O'Hara, an ebullient vaudevillian and aspiring stage actress.
Allen suddenly reveals that he is a millionaire pretending to be a normal person in order to make sure Anne's feelings are genuine.
Though Anne takes years to move on, she eventually becomes a model for beauty products and starts dating the cosmetics company owner, the older, wealthy Kevin Gillmore.
Meanwhile Jennifer begins a relationship with the childish, sex-obsessed singer Tony Polar, but their romance is frequently interrupted by his domineering older sister, Miriam.
After reuniting with an increasingly unsympathetic Neely, who is in the midst of an affair, Jennifer becomes dependent on 'dolls', amphetamines and barbiturates, to calm her frayed nerves.
Jennifer then moves to Europe and finds work in art house films, which, owing to her nudity, are considered softcore pornography in the United States.
However long workdays and the stress over her husband's infidelity (with both men and women) keep her dependent on 'dolls' and she is becoming increasingly unpopular with the studio because of her tantrums and walkouts.
After her fiancé says he doesn't want children and makes a comment suggesting he's only interested in her body Jennifer becomes convinced that she will never be loved for who she is.
Henry persuades Anne to wait out the humiliation and pretend she knows nothing, assuring her that Lyon will grow tired of Neely and return to her.
After repaying Anne's loan he breaks off the affair (losing Neely as a client in the process) but quickly begins a new one with a teenaged up-and-coming singer.
Though Anne finally admits to herself that Lyon will never stop having affairs, she assures herself that she will eventually fall out of love and become numb to all of her pain before reaching for her 'dolls' again.
[5] Valley of the Dolls is considered a roman à clef, with its characters based on famous figures such as Judy Garland, Carole Landis, Dean Martin, and Ethel Merman.
[12] Time magazine called it the "Dirty Book of the Month", and said: "It might more accurately be described as a highly effective sedative, a living doll".
[1] By the time of Susann's death in 1974, it had entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the best-selling novel in publishing history, with more than 17 million copies sold.
[2] In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, when Billy Pilgrim is brought to Tralfamadore for the first time and asks for reading material, he is given The Valley of The Dolls, which is the only physical copy of an English-speaking book the Tralfamadorians have aboard their spaceship.
In the 2023 tactical first-person shooter game Ready or Not, one of the levels involving a child sexual abuse sting bears the name of the novel.
In 1967, the book was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Mark Robson (Peyton Place), and starring Barbara Parkins as Anne, Patty Duke as Neely, Paul Burke (Lyon), Sharon Tate (Jennifer), and Susan Hayward (Helen).
The screenplay was written by Helen Deutsch (National Velvet) and Dorothy Kingsley (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), and produced by Robson and David Weisbart.
Like the book, although the reviews were scathing,[18] the film was an enormous box-office hit, becoming the sixth most popular of the year with $44 million at the domestic box office.
[22] Susann provided a title for the film, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,[22] and a treatment that involved Anne Welles moving into television journalism while attempting to raise her teenage daughter, Julie, as a single mother following another rocky love affair with Lyon Burke.
[23] Sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer produced and directed Beyond from a screenplay by his friend, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert.
It was part of the Woman's Hour programme's ongoing fifteen-minute daily drama slot,[25] and has been rebroadcast several times on BBC Radio 4 Extra in three 70-minute omnibus episodes.