VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
StreetSigns
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About 25 years ago the play’s director, Michael Hildebrand, fell in love with the movie, he said, “fascinated with its badness.” Based on Jacqueline Susann’s novel, Valley of the Dolls is a potpourri of Hollywood cliches, a titillating 60s soap opera about a culture of drugs and free love gone bad. Three women become friends in New York’s cutthroat show-business world, their lives turn wildly successful, and they wind up drowning in California decadence. The story begins with Anne Welles: suspecting she’s frigid, she leaves her boyfriend and small hometown for the Big Apple. Unexpectedly excited by the dashing talent agent Lyon Burke, who’s sworn off marriage, she begins an ill-fated affair with him. Meanwhile, Anne encourages the peppy young singer Neely O’Hare; once sweet, she’s later transformed by success and drugs–“dolls”–into an ugly prima donna. Jennifer North completes the trio as the no-brains beauty with a heart of gold; she marries Tony, a Tom Jones-type sex symbol with a plummeting career and a crippling disease. The ultimate in tacky comes when the big-bosomed Jennifer discovers she has breast cancer.
Making fun of the film’s artificial acting, Hildebrand elicits broad, self-conscious posing from his players. Lovers embrace only to stop and look at the audience, displaying deliriously happy smiles or pensive gazes. The last scene in the play mocks what was no doubt meant to be a final stirring shot in the film, when Anne walks in the woods, leaving behind everything she once thought she wanted. Onstage, of course, she looks ridiculous brushing a branch on the floor with such profundity.
