"Look" - September 5, 1967

"The Dames in the Valley of the Dolls"

    Valley of the Dolls, that candy box of vulgarity with something for everyone, has, at last, reached its big-money mecca. Jacqueline Susann's super-selling book is now, what else? a motion picture, shot in, where else? Hollywood, the place that understands it best. "VD," as it has been callously abbreviated by the cynics, is the gargantuan saga of three girls and the nasty, cheesy, show-bizzy world they live in, which drives them not only to drink but to "dolls," which are pills other than aspirin.

    Naturally, as soon as 20th Century Fox announced the movie, the producer practically had to disconnect his phone. Everyone who was anyone (also everyone who was no one) was simply dying to play one of those juicy parts. The lead, "Anne Welles," is described in casting-sheet prose as "Exquisitely beautiful, but does not play it up. Prototype: Grace Kelly." (The book, at least, shoots some hard truths: i.e., when Anne winds up with her crummy dream man, he makes her as miserable as everyone else. Instead, in the movie, she Sees the Light and Finds Happiness.) "Neely O'Hara" is a young singer, turned "vicious, egocentric addict. Prototype: Judy Garland." (Miss Garland herself, cast in another role, was fired.) "Jennifer North" is the "international sex symbol victimized by everyone. Prototype: Marilyn Monroe." Yum yum. Step right up folks. Here are the lucky winners:

    "Roll over and over and over," purrs Dolls director Mark Robson, as the camera rolls behind him. The lady on the bed obliges. She's Sharon Tate, she's gorgeous, she doesn't have any clothes on, and from every indication, she knows how to roll over. "Cut!" belts Robson. Then, one-two-three, smiling madly for no apparent reason, Sharon springs out of bed. (She's not naked after all. She's wearing lovely little bikini panties.) Blithely, she reaches into a terry cloth robe, held out by a wardrobe lady, plucks her wiglet off and hands it to a hair lady, and turns to see some scantily clad photographs of herself given to her by a publicity lady. "I want none of these to go out. None, none, NONE," says Sharon, who tends to repeat words for emphasis. "Sharon's very sensitive," explains one of the more serious minded 20th executives.

Sharon Tate was just another Hollywood cupcake when, one day, at an audition for the TV series Petticoat Junction, producer Martin Ransohoff just happened to bounce by. As the story goes, Ransohoff gave her the "Stick-with-me-I'll-make-you-a-star-baby" business. Sharon stuck, and before she could say oops she was indeed starring in a film called Your Teeth in My Neck. Just a whistle-stop away was Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis. Sharon isn't crazy about the latter film (she's very good in it) because the character she plays is, of all things, a body queen with shredded wheat between her ears instead of brains. "People look at me," laments Sharon, who doesn't go in much for underwear, "and all they see is a sexy thing. I mean people see sexy, I mean sexy is all they see." She sighs deeply, sweetly—voice all baby's breath. "When I was put under contract, I thought, ‘Oh, how nice, but'—" she stops, as if holding back a sob— "I was just a piece of merchandise. No one cared about me, Sharon.

    "People expect so much of an attractive person. I mean people are very critical on me. It makes me tense. Even when I lay down I'm tense. I've got an enormous imagination. I imagine all kinds of things. Like that I'm all washed up, I'm finished. I think sometimes that people don't want me around. I don't like to be alone though. When I'm alone my imagination gets all creepy.

    "If you just take it down to bare facts, the reason for living is the reason you make it. I mean the brain was made to create. I'm trying to develop myself as a person. Well, like sometimes on weekends I don't wear makeup."

    She sticks two fingers in her mouth, pulls out an elephant-gray wad of gum, pushes it back, cracks it, snorts an unprintable word and belches. Guess who? Mae West? Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom? Nope. It's Patricia Duke, yesterday's moppet, today's sewer mouth. (The latter appellation is her own.) "That's me! Old sewer mouth!" she yuks. "Why? I dunno. Once, I swore off swearing—for a whole year. But I'm at it again." She sighs and begins chewing on a false fingernail. "I dunno. I guess I gotta act tough. I mean everyone's bigger than me. Everybody's got a bigger bra size. I'm like a little man. I'll tell you one thing, I'm not doing any more Patty Lanes [the itsy-poo teenybopper she played on her TV series]. The only reason I did that show in the first place was that I had nothing else to do. Boy, was I stuck. Like I had to turn down A Patch of Blue. It would've ruined my image, see. My marriage changed things a lot [to Harry Falk, a young director]. How can you get married if you're a little girl? I didn't want to walk into a restaurant and have people look at Harry funny, ya know what I mean? - . .

    "I begged for this part. But I'll tell ya, they asked me to read for it, and that really—.* Sure, I identify with Neely. I identify with her loneliness. That's why she's so self-destructive. But she doesn't know how to reach people. The other people tested played her like a hard-nosed bitch. I played her loneliness. I understood that. Like when I was 18, I lived alone, and I was mean to people. But it was just a defense."

    Patty Duke's childhood in a $36-a-month apartment in Brooklyn makes The Dead End Kids sound like Little Women. Her father, a sometime-parking-lot attendant, sometime-taxi-driver, was an alcoholic and left her mother when Patty was six. At seven, she went to work: "You know—commercials, extras, that junk. I hated it. . . . Yeah, I went to that professional children' s school. All you do in that place is sit around for three years. My ex-managers—I lived with them for awhile—they were gonna send me to school in Switzerland. But I was always working.

    "I'm a good actress. I have good insights. That's why I was a good kid actor. And that's why I'm good now. I'd never quit acting. It's the only thing I've ever known. It makes me feel safe. It's hard to find anything else to feel safe at."

(*This and other colorful expressions censored by the editor.)

    Barbara Parkins gazes in the wardrobe mirror, searchingly. Suddenly, she catches sight of her own lovely face. Her eyes meet. Her lips are moist.

    Violins seem to sound from the clothes racks: It's love.

    "Mother and I came to Hollywood from Canada on a bus," says Barbara of her humble beginnings. "We got off at the corner of Western and Hollywood Boulevard. I was just like a little baby coming into the world!" While waiting for her Big Break, baby Barbara did the classic movie-usherette-by-day, dancing-class-by-night routine. Big Break came, at last, on America's hottest TV show, Peyton Place. That was OK for awhile. "But the trouble with Betty Anderson," [the part she plays] says Barbara sadly, "is that she only has a smoldering sex. She's not really a sex symbol. That's what I really want." To prove to the world, "that Betty Anderson had a body," as she puts it, Barbara posed last spring for Playboy. She does point out, however, the importance of certain areas of her body not being altogether exposed. "That way, there's something that the man wants to lift up to see under," she explains. "Of course, when I heard I had two nude scenes in this movie, I was terribly excited. I couldn't wait! I would like all people to be attracted to me—" she smiles—"especially men. Like Marilyn Monroe. Everyone loved her."

    Days later, we are in a Catholic rest home for some on-location shooting. Barbara has a break, and we go inside, where it is cooler. "We have no Irene Dunnes or Joan Crawfords anymore," she begins . "There was a strength about those women. That is a strength I hope to bring across." She is excited by this idea and begins to chew her gum faster. Then . . . "Oh, of course," she says suddenly to two nuns, who have shyly come over to ask for an autograph. Blushing, they hand her some sheets of pale-green stationery with little butterflies painted on the corners. Barbara writes her name nicely, and thanking her, the nuns back away. "Let's see, where was I?" says Barbara. "Oh, yes, I think I'd like very much to be like Ava Gardner. She is Sex. And I think Loretta Young is just the epitome of femininity. Then I could add Sophia Loren ... ," she sighs. "The problem is, I worry too much. I'm trying to instill in myself the attitude, ‘C'est la vie,' but it's hard, because I'm a deep thinker."

    Don't worry, Barb. Just keep instilling.

END

Click HERE for photos.

Copyright 2004 by Mark Turner
Use of photos of Sharon Tate, courtesy of Debra Tate.