Inside the mind of legendary, ‘scandalous’ female authors Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins

In Gill Paul’s latest book, Scandalous Women, a historical novel about phenomenally bestselling authors Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins—both famous for their sex-driven fiction and their struggles for recognition and critical acceptance in the publishing world dominated by men. 1960s – there’s a shocking scene that could come out of today’s #MeToo scandals.

A key character, a recent college graduate named Nancy, desperate for a career as a book editor, discovers that in order to secure a job as a lowly assistant at the Manhattan publishing house, Bernard Geis Associates—Susann’s real-life publisher—she you have to pass a test that has nothing to do with the musty, stuffy world of books. With her “tight knee-length skirt” up, she’s asked to slide down the office’s shiny, slippery fireman’s pole while the company’s male employees look on gleefully from below.

“It’s our initiation test to see if you’re the right fit,” a Geis employee calls out to Nancy as she’s about to begin the career slide of her life. “Come on honey, don’t be afraid,” another office shouts brutally. “Prove you’re a good sport.”

Nancy proved it with “universal applause, shouting and cheering,” as Bernie Geis himself declares, “I think she’s got the job.”

The fictional Nancy would go on to edit former Broadway actress Susann’s first novel, Valley of the Dolls, a world bestseller that would make Susann a household name. She would also team him with the equally best-selling British author, Jackie Collins, in this fun read, with a serious subject.

British bestselling author Gill admits in this pink-jacketed paperback that most everything—the dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and many events—is fictional, with stories loosely crafted to “resemble the kinds of plots found in novels.” by Collins and Susann. But she chose to write Scandalous Women because she felt “the treatment of the two authors by the publishing industry, the media and the public in the 1960s was an important story to tell”.

She found it “remarkable how shocking it was considered for women to write about sex at the time, although the descriptions of the two Jackies were never graphic or detailed”.

However, Collins and Susann faced barrages of real hate mail, vile comments and bad reviews from literary writers, along with condemnation from feminists decades before the horrors of social media.

Alongside contemporary erotica such as Fifty Shades of Grey, also written by a woman, Collins and Susann’s work was “tame by comparison, but they were both great storytellers and that’s the key to their phenomenal and continued success”. writes the author. .

“Valley of the Dolls” has sold more than 31 million copies while Collins’ 32 novels have sold more than 500 million copies, which Paul states, “not bad for two women with challenges in their private lives, acting in what was still very clearly a man’s world.”

Setting her characters in the Swinging Sixties, Paul had clearly read “a few” memoirs from people who had worked in publications during that period “and gleaned insights from them about how female staff members were treated”.

But there’s no evidence to back up the strange slide show for a firefighter job with Nancy, except that Geis, who died at age 91 in 2001, reportedly had such a device in his Midtown office. , allowing him to slide it off at the end of the workday.

Paul also “invented” the Collins-Susann relationship, with the author stating, “It was wishful thinking on my part.”

Susann “poured her life” into the pages of Valley of the Dolls, having gone through “five separate drafts” and “incorporating the wisdom she has gained about gender relations, based on her jobs and her experience of long in counseling.friends on their romantic escapades.

And it has included lust – lots of steamy explicit sex. She still cringed every time she pictured her mother reading it.”

And Susann, according to the confession, was even nervous about her showbiz producer husband Irving Mansfield reading early “because of the sex scenes that involved feats they had never done in the marital bed, but he said that he loved it. He always had her by his side, no matter what.”

Among the many supposed fictional scenes was Susann’s appearance on the Tonight Show to promote Valley of the Dolls. Johnny Carson holds up the book and tells his large audience, “I know many readers love your novel, but it must be disheartening to have received such terrible press reviews.”

Her response: “Let me tell you, Johnny, the more rocks they throw at me, the more copies I’m going to sell.”

While Susann and Collins became rich, glittering stars from what critics considered their trashy novels, their lives ended sadly; both succumbed to cancer, Susann at 53 in 1974, Collins at 77 in 2015.

In the author’s acknowledgments, she offers her “eternal gratitude” to Susann and Collins for “all they have done to advance the cause of women’s writing.” They pioneered the kinds of novels that millions of readers around the world enjoy, with captivating settings, juicy plots and generous servings of sex.”