This movie has a really bad reputation, but believe me, it is in fact quite watchable and in its way at times irresistible. Based on an incredibly popular but trashy novel by Jacqueline Susann, it's a pretty good showcase for its female leads. (The males in the cast are all largely anonymous). Barbara Parkins is the classy New Englander who gets involved with a show-biz agent who doesn't believe in marriage. The lovely but doomed Sharon Tate plays a showgirl who descends to making porn pictures (all very carefully staged) to support her terminally ill husband and Lee Grant plays his bossy sister. Patty Duke who one associates nowadays with mumsy roles in a thousand television movies has the showiest and most OTT role as a talented singer who becomes her own worse enemy. Finally we have Susan Haywood (in a role originally intended for Judy Garland) as the aging bitch diva. Approached with an open mind, it is no less entertaining than other soapy flicks of the period.
Incidentally Ross Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" from 1970 is in no way a sequel, but certainly has its own memorable camp charms.
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