Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 1970 American musical comedy film starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Erica Gavin, Edy Williams, Marcia McBroom, John LaZar, and Michael Blodgett. It was directed by Russ Meyer and co-written by Meyer and Roger Ebert. Originally intended as a sequel to the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was instead revised as a spoof of the original after 20th Century Fox rejected two screenplay drafts that were submitted. Jacqueline Susann, author of the novel Valley of the Dolls, had been asked to write a screenplay but declined. As a result, the studio placed a disclaimer at the beginning of the film informing the audience that the two films are not intended to be connected. Posters for the movie read, "This is not a sequel — there has never been anything like it". Upon its initial release, the film was given an X rating by the MPAA; in 1990, it was re-classified as NC-17.
The film was made by Fox while the studio was being sued by Jacqueline Susann, according to Irving Mansfield's book Jackie and Me. Susann herself had come up with the title while she was writing her second novel The Love Machine. The suit did not come to trial until after the death of Jacqueline Susann, and her estate won a $2 million verdict against the studio.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (sometimes referred to as BVD) is the first of two films produced by independent filmmaker Meyer for 20th Century Fox (it was followed by The Seven Minutes), and one of three films that film critic Ebert co-wrote with Meyer. Ebert has written that Beyond the Valley of the Dolls "seems more and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum."
