IKON: This week Fallon Gold writes about her love for Jacqueline Susann and her novels including Valley of the Dolls.

Growing up, there were a handful of books belonging to my mum that I would hide under my pillow and secretly read with a torch under the covers. They were all popular ­ often notorious ­novels and they were trash. This was my formative queer education, darlings. One of these books was Valley Of The Dolls. I would re­read it over and over. As the years passed I would buy replacement copies as the old ones fell apart or were ‘borrowed’. I still read this book at least twice a year, every year. It is my favourite novel.

Set in 40s, 50s, 60s New York and Hollywood and told from the point of view of its three women protagonists, it is full of glamour, sex, pills (the dolls) and about the sleazy underbelly of showbiz. All the queer food groups, honey. No wonder I was hooked. Aside from the ‘shocking’ hetero sex (including anal), there was also the part where the most beautiful woman in the world – Jennifer – has a teenage affair with another, equally gorgeous girl. This said something to lil’ dyke me that I hadn’t considered before. I’d only been exposed to lez love through things like The Well Of Loneliness and didn’t know that Sapphic desire could come in such uber­femme form. Another gay awakening.

In my babyqueer brain this campy trash was uber­sophisticated. I was already obsessed, to perhaps an unhealthy degree, with old Hollywood. Dynasty would soon be my most fervent cultural reference for all things classy. Although I became aware that this novel had been particularly scandalous when it came out, I considered scandal to be an inherent part of sophistication. After all, Hollywood was my main reference point for glamour.

The characters in the book – Anne from a small town, Neely the girl next door with talent and temperament, Jennifer ‘The Body’ with no talent, and Helen Lawson the brash Broadway harridan – were all awful and wonderful at the same time. I wanted to be part of showbiz! Even the drug-fuelled, tragedy side of showbiz… That’s where all the excitement was! And it was painted as an inevitable part of the journey down that road to stardom.

I saw the TV movie version of Valley first. And actually, I’m glad I did. Full of Dynasty-­style trash – flash lamé or satin dresses and big, teased, hairspray­-crispy hair – that film got me even more hooked on the story. Later I would see the ultra­cult cinema version (a few billion times), mourn for the loss of Judy Garland in the Helen Lawson role (she filmed part of one scene before being fired) and quote along with every other queen in the land: SPARKLE, NEELY, SPARKLE!

On the spine of the book was a colour drawing of another glamourous chick: author Jacqueline Susann. Over the years I became as obsessed with her as I was dedicated to re­reading Valley. And she, as it turned out, was even more scandalous and exciting than her filthy novels. Cue another TV Movie, this time a biopic about Jackie starring one of the nosejobs from Knots Landing. And I got to watch ‘Jacqueline Susann’ have alluded to sex with another lady. For, you see, our Jackie S was a bi-girl. She had a relationship with the gorgeous, tragic Carole Landis when they were in the blossom of youth and in a play together (their obsession with each other’s breasts was the inspiration for the Jennifer sex scene in Valley) and Susann was said to have had a stalkery fixation with Ethel Merman. There are those who say that Jackie’s lust for The Merm was unrequited; others swear that they saw them making out on the couch at a showbiz party. I – of course – prefer to believe the latter.

Jackie wasn’t just an occasional girl fucker but, more specifically, an equal opportunity star fucker. She worked her way through a few comedians (Jewish comics were a weakness for La Susann) and formed obsessional friendships with Judy Garland, Bette Davis (who lobbied to play Helen in the movie) and Doris Day. One star who Jackie wasn’t impressed with was Joan Crawford. It was rumoured that Valley’s Helen Lawson was based on Ethel Merman (probably was) and/or Crawford. Jackie said that if she’d based Lawson on Crawford, ‘Helen would have been a monster’.

This isn’t all there is to love about Jackie Susann. Her first book was written from the point of view of her poodle and called Every Night, Josephine! There was also Jackie’s style. It was big. She favoured the colourful, patterned garishness of Pucci and made her already massive hair bigger with wiglets. I mean. Right? Wiglets. Her personality was equally large and colourful and she excelled in self­promotion. This aspect can best be witnessed in the polarizing biopic that is Bette Midler in Isn’t She Great? Yes, it’s not exactly Jackie faithful but that film is SUPER FUN! And has Stockard Channing as Jackie’s drunken best friend. Come on.

Jackie would go on to pen a handful of other novels on back of the enormous success of Valley. They were hit and miss as were the movies made from them. Her last work is – for me – her second finest and was completed from her notes after her death. She’d been asked to write an article on the ‘other Jackie’ – Kennedy­/Onassis – but instead decided to do what she did best. Barely fictionalize the superfamous and turn it into a novel. Entitled Dolores, the book’s about a young, fashion­conscious first lady who witnesses the assassination of her president husband, struggle with the enforced seclusion of very public widowhood and ends up marrying a billionaire. So, hardly covering up the real life of Jackie O, then. However, as fascinating as the life of Jacqueline K­O is, somehow Susann managed to make Dolores even more compelling. We get to see into the mind of the protagonist and of course all the rumours are laid bare and then some extra trash, sex and scandal piled on for good measure – the glory of fictionalized ‘fact’. And no one could do that better than Jacqueline Susann. No, not even – CONTROVERSY ALERT! – the other, other Jackie, Ms Collins (RIP).–