Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 1970 American satirical musical melodrama film starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Phyllis Davis, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, Erica Gavin, and David Gurian. The film was directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert from a story by Ebert and Meyer.
Originally intended as a direct sequel to the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was instead revised as a satirical extension of the original. Beyond was met with negative reviews upon its initial release, but it became a box office success. The film developed a cult following in subsequent decades and has since earned critical reappraisal for its satirical and metafictional elements.
Plot Three young women—Kelly MacNamara, Casey Anderson, and Petronella "Pet" Danforth—perform in a rock band, the Kelly Affair, managed by Harris Allsworth, Kelly's boyfriend. The four travel to Los Angeles to find Kelly's estranged aunt, Susan Lake, heiress to a family fortune. After Susan promises Kelly a third of her inheritance, Porter Hall, her sleazy financial advisor, discredits Kelly as a "hippie" to dissuade Susan from dividing the fortune he secretly wants to embezzle.
Undeterred, Susan introduces the Kelly Affair to a flamboyant, well-connected rock producer, Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell, who coaxes them into an impromptu performance at one of his parties (after a set by the real-life band Strawberry Alarm Clock). The band is so well-received that becomes their svengali manager, changing their name to the Carrie Nations and starting a long-simmering feud with Harris.
Kelly drifts away from Harris and dates Lance Rocke, a high-priced gigolo, who has his own designs on her inheritance. After losing Kelly, Harris is seduced by the sexually aggressive porn star Ashley St. Ives. She soon tires of his conventional nature and waning libido due to increasing drug and alcohol intake. Harris's further descent into drug and alcohol use leads to a fistfight with Lance and a one-night stand with Casey, which results in pregnancy. Kelly ends her affair with Lance after he severely beats Harris.
Casey, distraught at getting pregnant and wary of men's foibles, has a lesbian affair with fashion designer Roxanne, who pressures her to have an abortion. Pet has a seemingly enchanted romance with law student Emerson Thorne after a meet cute at one of parties. Their fairy-tale romance frays when Pet sleeps with Randy Black, a violent prize fighter who beats up Emerson and tries to run him down with a car.
Porter offers Kelly $50,000 to relinquish any claim to Susan's inheritance. When Kelly angrily rejects his offer at one of parties, Susan learns of his underhanded ploy and severs her ties with him.
The Carrie Nations release several records despite constant touring and drug use. Upset at being pushed to the sidelines, Harris attempts suicide by leaping from the rafters of a sound stage during a television appearance by the band. Harris survives the fall but becomes paraplegic from his injuries.
Kelly devotes herself to caring for Harris, and Emerson forgives Pet for her infidelity. Casey and Roxanne share a tender romance, and Susan Lake is reunited with her former fiancé, Baxter Wolfe. This idyllic existence ends when invites Casey, Roxanne, and Lance to a psychedelic-fueled party at his house. After tries to seduce Lance, who spurns him, he reveals that he has breasts and is a female in drag. goes on a murderous rampage: he kills Lance with a sword, stabs his servant Otto to death, and shoots Roxanne and Casey, killing them.
Responding to a desperate phone call Casey made shortly before her death, Kelly, Harris, Pet, and Emerson arrive at house to subdue him. Pet is wounded in the melee, which ends in death. Harris is able to move his feet, which is the start of his recovery from paralysis. Three couples—Kelly and Harris, Pet and Emerson, and Susan and Baxter—wed while Porter watches from outside the courthouse window.
Cast
Production Development
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was originally intended as a straightforward sequel to the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls. Jacqueline Susann, author of the novel Valley of the Dolls, had come up with the title while she was writing her second novel The Love Machine. Susann wrote a treatment for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and by June 1968, Fox wanted Valley of the Dolls screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley to return to write the new film. However, Kingsley was unavailable and busy on Bracken's World.Channing 'Frizzy' in Next Opus, Chicago Tribune, 24 June 1968: b10. In November, it was reported that Barbara Parkins would return in the film, but Patty Duke and Sharon Tate would not."Smog Gets the Blame Again" NORMA LEE BROWNING, Chicago Tribune, 20 Nov 1968: b1.
In June 1969, Fox announced the film would be made in the next 18 months and would come from Irving Mansfield Productions; Irving Mansfield was the husband and agent of Jacqueline Susann.20 FILMS SCHEDULED FOR SHOOTING AT FOX Los Angeles Times 23 June 1969: c18. A script was written by Jean Holloway.Some New Faces in Crowd at Warner's Haber, Joyce. Los Angeles Times, 20 Aug 1969: e17.
Two months later, Fox decided that Mansfield would no longer make the film. Instead, they hired Russ Meyer, whose recent X-rated independent movie Vixen! had been a commercial success. Holloway's script was discarded, and the film critic Roger Ebert, a friend of Meyer's, took a five-week leave of absence from the Chicago Sun-Times to write a script. Parkins was no longer attached to the film.MOVE CALL SHEET: Director for 'Dolls' Sequel, Martin, Betty. Los Angeles Times, 26 Aug 1969: d17. Meyer said Richard Zanuck, head of Fox, gave him a weekend to come up with an idea of how it could be done, "stressing budget strongly in line with the whole ideas of making movies more cheaply" and encouraging him to "make an R film smashing against an X rating".
Script Meyer says he and Ebert wrote a 127-page treatment in 10 days and the script in three weeks. Neither of them had read the novel, but they watched the 1967 film and used the same formula: "Three young girls come to Hollywood, find fame and fortune, are threatened by sex, violence, and drugs, and either do or do not win redemption", according to Ebert. He later added: "We would include some of the sensational elements of the original story—homosexuality, crippling diseases, characters based on 'real' people, events out of recent headlines—but, again, with flat-out exaggeration".RUSS MEYER: King of the Nudies, Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1 (Jan/Feb 1973): 35-46.
The script was not only a spoof of the original film but also, in Ebert's words, "a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters, and success formulas, heavily overlaid with such shocking violence that some critics didn't know whether the movie 'knew' it was a comedy".Ebert, Roger. "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" on the Roger Ebert's Film Festival website, comments originally written for Film Comment in 1980.
Ebert said the plot was derived in collaboration "by creating characters and then working out situations to cover the range of exploitable content we wanted in the film. Meyer wanted the film to appeal, in some way, to almost anyone who was under thirty and went to the movies. There had to be music, mod clothes, black characters, violence, romantic love, soap opera situations, behind-the-scenes intrigue, fantastic sets, lesbians, orgies, drugs and (eventually) an ending that tied everything together".
Meyer's intention was for the film to "simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick, and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called 'the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business'".
Meyer submitted the script to Richard Zanuck at Fox in September, and Zanuck greenlit the film.Character Actor to Star, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep 1969: a9. Meyer said when Fox offered him the film, "I felt like I had pulled off the biggest caper in the world". He described the film as "a soap opera for young people, a cornocopia of wild, way-out now entertainment".King of the Nudies on Biggest Film Caper Yet, Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times, 30 Nov 1969: s18. Ebert later recalled: At the time we were working on BVD I didn't really understand how unusual the project was. But in hindsight I can recognize that the conditions of its making were almost miraculous. An independent X-rated filmmaker and an inexperienced screenwriter were brought into a major studio and given carte blanche to turn out a satire of one of the studio's own hits. And BVD was made at a time when the studio's own fortunes were so low that the movie was seen almost fatalistically, as a gamble that none of the more respectable studio executives really wanted to think about, so that there was a minimum of supervision (or even cognizance) from the Front Office.Russ Meyer: Ten Years After the 'Beyond', Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 16, Iss. 4 (Jul/Aug 1980): 43-48, 80.
Character influences Roger Ebert revealed that many of the film's themes and characters were based upon real people and events, but because neither Ebert nor Russ Meyer actually met these people, their characterizations were based on pure speculation. Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell – the fictional eccentric rock producer turned Carrie Nations manager was loosely based on real-life producer Phil Spector. More than three decades later, Spector was convicted of murder after the body of Lana Clarkson was found at his mansion, which is somewhat reminiscent of the events of the film's climax. Randy Black – the heavyweight champ character was loosely based on the real World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali. The climactic, violent ending, which was not in the original script, was inspired by the real-life Tate-LaBianca murders perpetrated by members of the Manson Family. The film began production on December 2, 1969, shortly after the murders, which were covered heavily by the media.McDonough 2006 pp.257, 262 Valley of the Dolls star Sharon Tate was among the murder victims, as was Jay Sebring. Vocalist Lynn Carey, who was dating Sebring and had been invited to join him the night of the Tate-LaBianca murders, refused his invitation, according to her comments on the DVD extras. Porter Hall – this scheming lawyer shares the name of a character actor who often played movie villains.McDonough 2006 p.271 Susan Lake and Baxter Wolfe were, in an original draft script, Anne Welles and Lyon Burke from Valley of the Dolls. Their back-story stated in BVD ("He proposed to her but it was the wrong time", "It's been three years..."), matches the ending of the original. Following Jacqueline Susann's legal-action proceedings against 20th Century Fox, the characters were renamed and recast. Barbara Parkins, who played Anne, was originally under contract to appear in BVD and was disappointed when she was abruptly removed from the project. The special edition DVD features a screen test with Michael Blodgett and Cynthia Myers enacting the bedroom scene between Lance and Kelly. Based on an early script, the dialogue has them make reference to Anne Welles, not Susan Lake, as Kelly's Aunt.
Casting The cast was composed almost entirely of unknowns. Meyer said that "Valley of the Dolls plus my own name will be enough".
Meyer said they would not have used Parkins if she had wanted to do the film because she was too costly to hire.
Cynthia Myers was a Playboy Playmate hired to play one of the girls who realizes she's a lesbian. In Meyer's comment: "It's a loving and tender thing. It's not The Killing of Sister George".
Edy Williams was under contract to Fox at the time.
Pam Grier made her film debut as an extra in a party scene.
Shooting