YMMV / Valley of the Dolls

• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Much like Mommie Dearest, the camp film adaptation has led to the book being thought of as trashy and exploitative too, even though it deviated significantly from it and Jacqueline Susann disowned it.
• Critic-Proof: Both the book and the film were trashed by critics, but the book became a best seller and the film was the fifth highest grossing of its year.
• Don't Shoot the Message: No one's about to disagree with the rampant abuse of performers in Hollywood, especially in the Golden Age. But maybe a Cliché Storm of Horrible Hollywood tropes with ridiculous overacting and writing akin to the trashiest Soap Opera isn't the best way to get that message across.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Many fans actually prefer the version of "It's Impossible" where Patty Duke does her own singing, feeling that her voice may be less polished than the dubbed version, but still quite distinctive.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Helen Lawson is humiliated when Neely rips off a wig and exposes her grey hair. Except the actual wig was an unflattering tightly curled 50s 'do and the grey hair just makes her look like a Silver Fox.
• Ham and Cheese: Susan Hayward was the only one in the cast who'd worked with Mark Robson before, and thus understood it when he wanted everything Helen Lawson said to be delivered "like a sledgehammer".
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the 1967 Film of the Book, Jennifer North — who commits suicide by overdose rather than having to undergo a mastectomy — is portrayed by Sharon Tate, who would wind up dead at the hands of the Manson Family just two years later.
  • Jennifer is also viewed entirely around how she looks, something Sharon too experienced in her career. After her death, Roman Polański famously said that people were always talking about her beauty - but never about how good she was as an actress. This at least has become slightly better, with increased interest in her limited filmography and appreciation for the potential she might have tapped into.
  • Jennifer discovers she has malignant breast cancer. In reality, Jacqueline Susann would succumb to cancer in 1974.
  • Also, seeing Neely O'Hara's stay in the sanitarium and her subsequent breakdown is very difficult to watch considering Patty Duke's public struggles with mental illness and bipolar disorder. Additionally, there is also her drug usage and alcoholism that she struggled with throughout the movie and her likely Downer Ending at the end, which was inspired by Judy Garland and her own struggles, who died of a drug overdose two years after the movie premiered.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Sharon Tate plays someone in a relationship with a Dean Martin Expy. The next year, she'd star alongside the man himself in The Wrecking Crew.
• Jerkass Woobie: Neely becomes an even bigger bitch as the story goes on, not to mention her drug and alcohol abuse makes working with her a nightmare. But from her very first introduction, she's being treated like dirt by Helen and is just as big a victim of the industry as the others.
• Just Here for Godzilla: About the only thing that's universally praised about the film is William H Daniels's cinematography, especially for highlighting the glamour of all three lead actresses.
• LGBT Fanbase: The film version is known as a Camp classic and has a huge queer fan base. It is very popular for drag shows in particular.
• Les Yay: In the book, Anne's narration often takes note of how amazingly beautiful Jennifer is and the two have a good time whenever they share an apartment with each other. There's even a conversation where Jennifer calls herself unlovable, prompting Anne to tell her she loves her, to which Jennifer responds by joking that the two of them would make a great lesbian couple. It helps that at the start of the book, Anne has only had bad experiences with kissing men and she despairs that there's something wrong with her.
• Memetic Mutation: "Sparkle, Neely, sparkle" is the line that has really endured over time.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: In spite of derogatory words about them being thrown around throughout the film, it still remains very popular with gay men.
• Narm:
  • A good portion of the hammy melodramatic acting brings this out halfway through.
  • The film's compression of the timeline results in this. The book covered twenty years, but the film is clearly much shorter (Neely is said to be 26 when she's fired from a film). It makes it even funnier to think that all this life changing drama is unfolding in such a short time frame.
  • "I'll Plant My Own Tree" is a weirdly written song with strange lyrics, that Judy Garland herself thought was ridiculous. Its staging in the film is especially bizarre, with it supposedly taking place during a highbrow Broadway show, and yet Helen is performing it amid a bunch of psychedelic glass shapes on stage.
  • In the book, after Neely's bungled self-harm attempt, she has a long, overdramatic soliloquy wondering if there's a heaven and if Jennifer is an angel.
• Narm Charm: Some fans think that Patty Duke's extremely big performance as Neely works for the character, because she is meant to be an over-the-top person who spends most of her screen time drunk or on drugs.
• Once Original, Now Overdone: The book was considered quite scandalous and risque at the time, but over the years as more works have gone further on Horrible Hollywood, it's hard to believe what made it so shocking and looks like stereotypical Cliché Storm of show business to some. It's been called the Fifty Shades of Grey of its day.
• Questionable Casting:
  • The casting of Patty Duke as Neely O'Hara was met with a lot of scratched heads when it was announced. Not just for her attempting to shake out of her wholesome child star image by jumping head-first into such a salacious role - but also because it called for someone who could sing and dance as well, and her previous attempt at starring in a musical (Billie) bombed. For reference, Barbra Streisand was the first choice. Sure enough, her singing was dubbed.
  • Casting Judy Garland as Helen Lawson was also thought to be in incredibly poor taste, given her very public struggles with substance abuse and financial hardship, with the character of Neely all but stated to be based on her, and having her play the one character who doesn't struggle with addiction could be seen as exploitative. And while she had the singing talent, her proficiency in playing vulnerable good girls was thought to make her ill-suited for an Alpha Bitch like Helen. It's generally assumed that her casting was mainly for publicity sake and to counteract a potential lawsuit from the actress herself.
  • While Sharon Tate was certainly beautiful enough to play a Ms. Fanservice like Jennifer and her performance has its fans, it's been noted that her persona was far too contemporary for a character intended as a classic bombshell like Marilyn Monroe or Carole Landis and, although she was hyped up as being more looks than talent, the press at the time viewed her as transcending sex symbol status.
  • Paul Burke, Tony Scotti and Alexander Davion all look so similar that it can make the men feel quite interchangeable with each other. Indeed, notable review stated that "they all must go to the same barber and tailor, and their mothers must all have been frightened by Robert Cummings. I couldn't tell them apart."
• Retroactive Recognition: Richard Dreyfuss makes his film debut as a stagehand.
• So Bad, It Was Better: The book received a miniseries adaptation in the 80s, which attempted more pathos and less Camp, and of course was ruled to be less trashy and therefore less memorable than the film version.
• So Bad, It's Good: The film's hammy acting and heavy-handed melodrama make for plenty of unintentional laughs.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The theme song of the film by Dionne Warwick sounds rather similar to the You Only Live Twice self-titled theme song by Nancy Sinatra.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • Sharon Tate imbues Jennifer with such sincere emotion and vulnerability that she's quite The Woobie. It speaks volumes of her talent that she's able to play talentless so well.
  • Lee Grant, who played Miriam, also took the film incredibly seriously at the time. The director commended her on one scene where she had to get emotional. It was filmed on a Friday and they had to finish it on Monday, and she brought the same emotion as she had before.
• Values Dissonance: Nowadays, hearing the characters casually throwing around words like "fag" and "faggot" is rather unnerving and controversial, even if back then it was considered a common insult along the lines of calling someone "stupid". It's even ironic considering its LGBT Fanbase. Although in the film itself it is being used to refer to Ted possibly being gay, and the majority of characters who say it are meant to be unsympathetic. Jennifer however saying it is jarring.
• Values Resonance: The book and film's focus on the abuse of women in the entertainment industry, and the struggles that come with being a performer are all still quite relevant today.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Anne is the naïve small town girl who enters a more colourful world and experiences a larger than life set of characters like Neely, Jennifer and Helen, leading to her being viewed as the dull one. The film is partly to blame, which takes some of the edge off her character and gives her a happy ending, making her feel more generic. Barbara Parkins indeed was auditioning for Neely, and Jennifer was her second option.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Jennifer. One of the few people who remained somewhat good and caring in the industry over the years, but she's just reduced to a sex object by people who only focus on her looks. She's based off Carole Landis, whose story was even sadder.
  • Miriam as well. She raised her kid brother single-handedly and was able to make him a success all the while worrying for years if the debilitating disease his father had will affect him. It sadly did with a vengeance and would ultimately destroy his, hers, and Jennifer's lives.

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