I – of course – prefer to believe the latter. There are those who say that Jackie’s lust for The Merm was unrequited others swear that they saw them making out on the couch at a showbiz party. She had a relationship with the gorgeous, tragic Carole Landis when they were in the blossom of youth and in a play together (their obsession with each other’s breasts was the inspiration for the Jennifer sex scene in Valley) and Susann was said to have had a stalkery fixation with Ethel Merman. For, you see, our Jackie S was a bi-girl.
And I got to watch ‘Jacqueline Susann’ have alluded to sex with another lady.
Cue another TV Movie, this time a biopic about Jackie starring one of the nosejobs from Knots Landing. Over the years I became as obsessed with her as I was dedicated to rereading Valley. And she, as it turned out, was even more scandalous and exciting than her filthy novels. On the spine of the book was a colour drawing of another glamourous chick: author Jacqueline Susann. Later I would see the ultracult cinema version (a few billion times), mourn for the loss of Judy Garland in the Helen Lawson role (she filmed part of one scene before being fired) and quote along with every other queen in the land: SPARKLE, NEELY, SPARKLE! Full of Dynasty-style trash – flash lamé or satin dresses and big, teased, hairspray-crispy hair – that film got me even more hooked on the story. I saw the TV movie version of Valley first. I wanted to be part of showbiz! Even the drug-fuelled, tragedy side of showbiz… That’s where all the excitement was! And it was painted as an inevitable part of the journey down that road to stardom. The characters in the book – Anne from a small town, Neely the girl next door with talent and temperament, Jennifer ‘The Body’ with no talent, and Helen Lawson the brash Broadway harridan – were all awful and wonderful at the same time. After all, Hollywood was my main reference point for glamour. Although I became aware that this novel had been particularly scandalous when it came out, I considered scandal to be an inherent part of sophistication. Dynasty would soon be my most fervent cultural reference for all things classy. I was already obsessed, to perhaps an unhealthy degree, with old Hollywood. In my babyqueer brain this campy trash was ubersophisticated. I’d only been exposed to lez love through things like The Well Of Loneliness and didn’t know that Sapphic desire could come in such uberfemme form. This said something to lil’ dyke me that I hadn’t considered before. Aside from the ‘shocking’ hetero sex (including anal), there was also the part where the most beautiful woman in the world – Jennifer – has a teenage affair with another, equally gorgeous girl. Set in 40s, 50s, 60s New York and Hollywood and told from the point of view of its three women protagonists, it is full of glamour, sex, pills (the dolls) and about the sleazy underbelly of showbiz. All the queer food groups, honey.
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