"Valley of the Dolls" vs "Mommie Dearest" vs "Dynasty"

[Snarky Oracle!]

Btw, think of me as your editor, not your enemy. I'm here to protect you.

Yeah, right. You just roll over and refuse to cuddle.

... And about that ginger.

It's not possible to make what happened in season 9 retroactively relevant for season 5 and make those episodes look better than they really were.

But yes, there is -- there's always a way!

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Patty Duke was a terrific actress, but was she the key casting problem which made VALLEY OF THE DOLLS so problematic?

It was never going to be "good" movie, but, aside from her total lack of believability of Duke as a singing-dancing sensation (she doesn't sing and is stiff as a board), all her scenes have her screaming unrelentingly. (Her choice, or the lousy director's?)

A lot of DOLLS docs have been popping up on my YT feed, for whatever reason, and they're all more entertaining than the movie itself.

 

[Ked]

Patty Duke was a terrific actress, but was she the key casting problem which made VALLEY OF THE DOLLS so problematic?

It was never going to be "good" movie, but, aside from her total lack of believability of Duke as a singing-dancing sensation (she doesn't sing and is stiff as a board), all her scenes have her screaming unrelentingly. (Her choice, or the lousy director's?)

A lot of DOLLS docs have been popping up on my YT feed, for whatever reason, and they're all more entertaining than the movie itself.

From a documentary I watched, it looked like it was all the director's fault. He just didn't seem like he was interested at all in how the movie was made, leaving the three leads to flounder.

 

[Willie Oleson]

She sang


But, yeah, ideally they should have convinced Helen Shapiro to play the part of Neely. That would have been a real shocker which is what this film needed to be (and miserably failed at).

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

She sang
View attachment 59103View attachment 59104View attachment 59105

But, yeah, ideally they should have convinced Helen Shapiro to play the part of Neely. That would have been a real shocker which is what this film needed to be (and miserably failed at).

I should have said "she doesn't sing well enough to play that kind of star."

Some people prefer Duke's LP singing to her voice-over double in the movie (I haven't heard it, and it's probably true) but she's supposed to be a Streisandian phenomenon in the script,

Duke might even rhumba, too, but we never saw a convincing manifestation expression of that in DOLLS.

From a documentary I watched, it looked like it was all the director's fault. He just didn't seem like he was interested at all in how the movie was made, leaving the three leads to flounder.

He was apparently mean to Sharon Tate, too. I'm guessing he knew Manson.

 

[Willie Oleson]

Duke might even rhumba, too, but we never saw a convincing manifestation expression of that in DOLLS.

Let's say that Barbara Parkins did it better in Peyton Place.