Valley Of The Dolls / Widescreen 12" LASERDISC Sharon Tate SEXY Patty Duke 16

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Valley Of The Dolls / Widescreen 12" LASERDISC  Sharon Tate SEXY Patty Duke 16
Discs have some dirt/smudges.  Cover has cornerwear and ringwear.
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Valley of the Dolls
1967 - 123 min. - Color
Genre: Drama
LaserDisc Movie Storyline:
Film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's melodramatic, bestselling potboiler. The story tracks the lives of three women -- naive New Englander Anne Welles, aspiring singer Neely O'Hara, and buxom beauty Jennifer North -- as they attempt to achieve fame and fortune in Hollywood. But as each starlet either rises to the top or falls to the bottom, she discovers that Hollywood is full of pitfalls and heartbreak. Instead of the happiness they seek, the trio finds only alcoholism, wild sexcapades, tantrums, porno roles, suicide, marital woes, wigs in the toilet, and a dependence on "dolls" -- slang for pills. Which of these ingenues will survive her "trip" through Hollywood?
LaserDisc Movie Review:
A cinematic take on a 1960s best-seller, Valley of the Dolls traces the ups and downs of three young women as fame, booze, pills, and men consume their lives. Well-bred, small-town Anne Welles (Peyton Place star Barbara Parkins) arrives in New York eager for fame but settles for a job assisting theatrical attorney Henry Bellamy (Robert H. Harris). The job leads her to cross paths with Helen Lawson (Hollywood veteran Susan Hayward), the grand dame of Broadway musicals, and Neely O'Hara (sitcom star Patty Duke), an up-and-coming performer whom Lawson unceremoniously boots from her latest show. Neely lands on her feet thanks to a series of nightclub gigs, and soon she and Anne befriend Jennifer North (Sharon Tate), a buxom starlet. As Neely becomes a huge star of stage and screen and Jennifer appears topless in a string of European "art" films, Anne becomes a wealthy cosmetics spokeswoman and suffers though a passionate but failed affair with aspiring writer Lyon Burke (Paul Burke). As the pressures of fame and failed romance take their toll on all three women, they take refuge in food, sex, liquor, and pills especially Neely, who becomes downright monstrous (the titular "dolls" are the uppers and downers to which she becomes hopelessly addicted). Although the film's characters are fictitious composites, Neely most closely resembles Judy Garland; Garland herself was originally cast as Lawson, but she was replaced after only a few days by Hayward. Although the film's trailer played up the story's titillating subject matter, the script for Valley of the Dolls actually toned down Jacqueline Susann's novel. And despite the fact that Dionne Warwick can be heard singing "(Theme From) The Valley of the Dolls" twice during the film, contractual snags kept her from releasing the soundtrack version; a different arrangement later became a number two pop hit in 1968. --- Brian Dillard
This bloodless adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's trashy best-seller Valley of the Dolls leaches the vigor from one of the all-time pop culture touchstones by shoehorning its multifaceted plot into a typical rags to riches to hearbreak mold and playing the results too darn straight. The film could have been either a sudsy melodrama or a deliberately campy show-biz delight, but director Mark Robson and a trio of screenwriters including Susann herself instead opt for a flatly realistic tone full of hollow transgressions and cautionary messages. Translating the bulk of the action from the '40s to the '60s, they nip and tuck Susann's intricate plot lines until all that's left are fame-is-hell clichs. The protagonists of Susann's novel are individuals even though each is a composite Hollywood archetype: Neely, the nice, working-class kid done in by the temptations of youthful fame; Anne, the classy young lady yearning for independence more than fame or fortune; and Jennifer, destined to escape her childhood poverty through looks and luck rather than talent. Here, however, they become nothing more than fame-obsessed stereotypes, and no amount of Sharon Tate T&A or Patty Duke overacting can change that. It doesn't help that the production design goes for such an anachronistic mixture of go-go boots and classic Broadway or that the songs and dance numbers are so leaden and banal. Perhaps the problem lies in the timing; Dolls was in theaters just a few years after the book's runaway success, before the novel's lasting power had become apparent. Treating their source material like titillating trash, then, the filmmakers ignored both its nascent feminism and the nuances of its observations about the road to fame. Susann's book is no pinnacle of literature,
Cast for Valley of the Dolls
Barbara Parkins - Anne Welles
Patty Duke [Astin]
Paul Burke - Lyon Burke
Sharon Tate - Jennifer North
Tony Scotti - Tony Polar
Martin Milner - Mel Anderson
Susan Hayward - Helen Lawson
Charlie Drake - Kevin Gillmore
Lee Grant - Miriam Polar
Naomi Stevens - Miss Steinberg
Robert H. Harris - Henry Bellamy
Jacqueline Susann - First Reporter
Robert Viharo - Director
Joey Bishop - Telethon Host
George Jessel - Host at Grammy Awards
Pat Becker
Peggy Rea - Neely's Voice Coach
Barry O'Hara - Assistant Stage Manager
Richard Angarola - Claude Chardot
Corinna Tsopei - Telephone Girl
Billy Beck - Man Sleeping in Movie House
Mikel Angel - Man in Hotel Room
Margot Stevenson - Anne's Mother
Gertrude Flynn - Ladies' Room Attendant
Richard Dreyfuss
Marvin Hamlisch - Pianist
Robert Gibbons - Desk Clerk at Lawrenceville Hotel
Jeanne Gerson - Neely's Maid
Dorothy Neumann
Norman Burton - Neely's Hollywood Director
Alexander Davion - Ted Casablanca
Judith Lowry - Aunt Amy
Barry Cahill - Man in Bar
Crew for Valley of the Dolls
Mark Robson - Director
David Weisbart - Producer
Helen Deutsch - Screenwriter
Dorothy Kingsley - Screenwriter
Jacqueline Susann - Screenwriter
William H. Daniels - Cinematographer
Dorothy Spencer - Editor
Philip M. Jefferies - Production Designer
Richard Day - Art Director
Jack Martin Smith - Art Director
John Williams - Musical Direction/Supervision / Composer (Music Score)
Andre Previn - Songwriter
Dory Previn - Songwriter
Raphael Bretton - Set Designer
Walter Scott - Set Designer
Billy Travilla - Costume Designer
Robert Sidney - Choreography
Ben Nye, Sr. - Makeup
L.B. Abbott - Special Effects
Art Cruickshank - Special Effects
Emil Kosa, Jr. - Special Effects
Awards for Valley of the Dolls
Best Score (nom) John Williams 1967 Academy
Feature Details
Title:
Valley of the Dolls
Feature Release Date:
1967
Genre:
Drama
Color:
Color
Runtime:
123 Minutes
Picture:
Letterboxed
Ratio:
2.35:1
Playback Format:
CLV
Technical Details
Catalog Number:
104785
UPC:
086162104763
Manufacturer:
Pioneer USA
Publisher:
CBS/FOX Video
Sides:
3
Cover:
Jacket
Spoken Language:
English
Country:
USA
Video Format:
NTSC