***This was originally posted on the Confessions blog***

Have you ever snapped up a shiny book for the beach or a plane trip? Something with gorgeous people doing scandalous things? Maybe a Jackie Collins novel? Maybe a Judith Krantz novel? And thought to yourself: Venus Maria is Madonna? Crystal Anderson is Joan Collins? Al King is Tom Jones? Those examples? Pulled straight from my head.

Back in the 1960s & 1970s you would have been reading Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine and Once is Not Enough. And just who was the author who seemed to know all the secrets and was the first person to put three books back to back #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list? The person who for many years was listed in the Guinness Book of Records with the best selling fiction book of all time? Ladies and gentlemen, Jacqueline Susann.

Once in an interview Jackie Collins said she learned about the other side of Hollywood by befriending and listening to people. Jacqueline Susann knew about the dark side of fame by living it. Leaving your family to try your luck in New York City? She did it. Getting fired from a desired role? Ditto. Behind the scenes of early television shows? Yup. Putting a family member into a institution? Yes. Along with those pieces of herself, she put pieces of the world around her. The friend who died tragically too young of cancer as Amanda. Another friend, a lovely blonde dead by her own hand as Jennifer. And yes, a certain eternal star as her nothing can hold her back Neely O’Hara.

But Jacqueline Susann was more than the failed actress, turned party girl, turned local television celebrity turned roman a clef author. She loved scifi, fantasy, the weird. What else can explain the last pages of Once is Not Enough, when our heroine January has an strange encounter on the beach? Her last book, the posthumous Yargo is a fantastic voyage to another world. I have this image of a teenage Jacqueline, hair done up in rag curlers, face creamed and curling up in bed with an issue of Weird Tales. Did she ever flop back on the pillows and wonder what it was like to write those things? Did she imagine herself on John Carter’s Mars or reading forbidden things in decaying leather volumes in a Dunwich farmhouse? Is there a fan letter in some uncovered archive to the Old Gentleman of Providence himself?

Curious? Take the time to go to your local bookstore or library. The scandalous doings of Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine, and Once is Not Enough might not be your thing. But her charming tale of life with a poodle Every Night Josephine might do the trick. Perhaps Barbara Seaman’s compelling biography Lovely Me? Jacqueline Susann deserves so much more than a poorly cast bio-pic and her books moldering on used book stores shelves…
Jacqueline Susann