In Gill Paul’s latest book, “Scandalous Women,” a historical novel about phenomenally bestselling authors Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins — each famous for his or her sex-driven fiction, and their battles for recognition and important acceptance within the male-dominated publishing world of the Sixties — there’s a shocking scene that may very well be right out of the #MeToo scandals of today.
A key character, a recent college graduate named Nancy, desperate for a profession as a book editor, finds that so as to secure a job as a lowly assistant within the Manhattan publishing house, Bernard Geis Associates — Susann’s real-life publisher — she must pass a test that has nothing to do with the musty, staid world of books. Together with her “tight knee-length skirt” hiked up, she’s required to slip down the office’s shiny, slippery fireman’s pole as the corporate’s male staffers gleefully ogle from below.
“It’s our initiation test to envision in case you’re the correct sort,” a Geis staffer calls out to Nancy as she’s about to start the profession slide of her life. “Come on sweetheart, don’t be afraid,” shouts one other office brute. “Prove you’re a very good sport.”
Nancy proved it to “general applause, hooting and cheering,” as Bernie Geis himself declares, “I feel she’s earned the job.”
The fictional Nancy would go on to edit the real-life former Broadway actress Susann’s first novel, “Valley of the Dolls,” certainly one of the world’s biggest bestsellers which might make Susann a household name. She’d also bring her along with the equally bestselling British author, Jackie Collins, on this fun read, with a serious theme.
The British bestselling creator Gill acknowledges on this pink-jacketed softcover that almost all all the pieces — dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and plenty of events — are made up, with stories loosely designed to “resemble the sorts of plots present in novels” by Collins and Susann. But she selected to jot down “Scandalous Women” because she felt the 2 authors’ “treatment by the publishing industry, the media, and the general public within the Sixties was a crucial story to inform.”
She found it “extraordinary how shocking it was considered for ladies to jot down about sex back then, although the 2 Jackies’ descriptions were never graphic or detailed.”
Still, Collins and Susann faced barrages of actual hate mail, vicious reviews and nasty critiques by the literati, together with condemnation by feminists many a long time before snarky social media.
Next to contemporary erotica like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” also written by a girl, Collins and Susann’s work was “tame by comparison, but each were terrific story tellers, and that’s the important thing to their phenomenal, continuing success,” writes the creator.
“Valley of the Dolls” has sold greater than 31 million copies while Collins’s 32 novels have sold greater than 500 million copies, which Paul declares, “isn’t bad for 2 women with challenges of their private lives, operating in what was still very clearly a person’s world.”
In putting her characters within the Swinging Sixties, Paul had clearly read “several” memoirs by individuals who had worked in publishing during that period “and gleaned insights from them concerning the way female staff members were treated.”
But there’s no evidence to support the bizarre slide-for-a-job fireman’s pole scene involving Nancy, except that Geis, who died at 91 in 2001, reportedly did have such a tool in his Midtown office, allowing him to slip down it at the top of the workday.
Paul also “invented” the Collins-Susann relationship, with the creator stating, “It was wishful pondering on my part.”
Susann “spilled her life” within the pages of “Valley of the Dolls,” having passed through “five separate drafts,” and “included the wisdom she’s acquired about relations between the sexes, based on her own affairs and her long experience of advising friends on their romantic escapades.
A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann” is written by Gill Paul.
And she or he’s included lust — loads of steamy explicit sex. She still cringed each time she pictured her mother reading it.”
And Susann, based on the narrative, was even nervous about her showbiz producer husband, Irving Mansfield, having an early read “due to the sex scenes that involved feats they’d never attempted within the marital bed, but he said he loved it. He at all times had her back, regardless of what.”
Amongst the various presumable fictional scenes was Susann’s appearance on the “Tonight Show” to advertise “Valley of the Dolls.” Johnny Carson holds up the book and tells his huge audience, “I do know numerous readers love your novel, but it surely have to be disheartening to have received such terrible press reviews.”
Her response: “Let me inform you, Johnny, the more rocks they throw at me, the more copies I’ll sell.”
While Susann and Collins became wealthy, glitzy stars from what critics considered their trashy novels, their lives ended sadly; each were felled by cancer, Susann at 53, in 1974, Collins at 77, in 2015.
Within the creator’s acknowledgements, she offers her “everlasting gratitude” to Susann and Collins for “all the pieces they did to advance the reason for women’s writing. They were trailblazers for the sorts of novels that hundreds of thousands of readers enjoy worldwide, with glamorous settings, juicy plots, and generous servings of sex.”
In Gill Paul’s latest book, “Scandalous Women,” a historical novel about phenomenally bestselling authors Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins — each famous for his or her sex-driven fiction, and their battles for recognition and important acceptance within the male-dominated publishing world of the Sixties — there’s a shocking scene that may very well be right out of the #MeToo scandals of today.
A key character, a recent college graduate named Nancy, desperate for a profession as a book editor, finds that so as to secure a job as a lowly assistant within the Manhattan publishing house, Bernard Geis Associates — Susann’s real-life publisher — she must pass a test that has nothing to do with the musty, staid world of books. Together with her “tight knee-length skirt” hiked up, she’s required to slip down the office’s shiny, slippery fireman’s pole as the corporate’s male staffers gleefully ogle from below.
“It’s our initiation test to envision in case you’re the correct sort,” a Geis staffer calls out to Nancy as she’s about to start the profession slide of her life. “Come on sweetheart, don’t be afraid,” shouts one other office brute. “Prove you’re a very good sport.”
Nancy proved it to “general applause, hooting and cheering,” as Bernie Geis himself declares, “I feel she’s earned the job.”
The fictional Nancy would go on to edit the real-life former Broadway actress Susann’s first novel, “Valley of the Dolls,” certainly one of the world’s biggest bestsellers which might make Susann a household name. She’d also bring her along with the equally bestselling British author, Jackie Collins, on this fun read, with a serious theme.
The British bestselling creator Gill acknowledges on this pink-jacketed softcover that almost all all the pieces — dialogue, thoughts, feelings, and plenty of events — are made up, with stories loosely designed to “resemble the sorts of plots present in novels” by Collins and Susann. But she selected to jot down “Scandalous Women” because she felt the 2 authors’ “treatment by the publishing industry, the media, and the general public within the Sixties was a crucial story to inform.”
She found it “extraordinary how shocking it was considered for ladies to jot down about sex back then, although the 2 Jackies’ descriptions were never graphic or detailed.”
Still, Collins and Susann faced barrages of actual hate mail, vicious reviews and nasty critiques by the literati, together with condemnation by feminists many a long time before snarky social media.
Next to contemporary erotica like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” also written by a girl, Collins and Susann’s work was “tame by comparison, but each were terrific story tellers, and that’s the important thing to their phenomenal, continuing success,” writes the creator.
“Valley of the Dolls” has sold greater than 31 million copies while Collins’s 32 novels have sold greater than 500 million copies, which Paul declares, “isn’t bad for 2 women with challenges of their private lives, operating in what was still very clearly a person’s world.”
In putting her characters within the Swinging Sixties, Paul had clearly read “several” memoirs by individuals who had worked in publishing during that period “and gleaned insights from them concerning the way female staff members were treated.”
But there’s no evidence to support the bizarre slide-for-a-job fireman’s pole scene involving Nancy, except that Geis, who died at 91 in 2001, reportedly did have such a tool in his Midtown office, allowing him to slip down it at the top of the workday.
Paul also “invented” the Collins-Susann relationship, with the creator stating, “It was wishful pondering on my part.”
Susann “spilled her life” within the pages of “Valley of the Dolls,” having passed through “five separate drafts,” and “included the wisdom she’s acquired about relations between the sexes, based on her own affairs and her long experience of advising friends on their romantic escapades.
A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann” is written by Gill Paul.
And she or he’s included lust — loads of steamy explicit sex. She still cringed each time she pictured her mother reading it.”
And Susann, based on the narrative, was even nervous about her showbiz producer husband, Irving Mansfield, having an early read “due to the sex scenes that involved feats they’d never attempted within the marital bed, but he said he loved it. He at all times had her back, regardless of what.”
Amongst the various presumable fictional scenes was Susann’s appearance on the “Tonight Show” to advertise “Valley of the Dolls.” Johnny Carson holds up the book and tells his huge audience, “I do know numerous readers love your novel, but it surely have to be disheartening to have received such terrible press reviews.”
Her response: “Let me inform you, Johnny, the more rocks they throw at me, the more copies I’ll sell.”
While Susann and Collins became wealthy, glitzy stars from what critics considered their trashy novels, their lives ended sadly; each were felled by cancer, Susann at 53, in 1974, Collins at 77, in 2015.
Within the creator’s acknowledgements, she offers her “everlasting gratitude” to Susann and Collins for “all the pieces they did to advance the reason for women’s writing. They were trailblazers for the sorts of novels that hundreds of thousands of readers enjoy worldwide, with glamorous settings, juicy plots, and generous servings of sex.”
