Customer Reviews

Isn't She Great?

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Korda makes it clear that Jacqueline Susann was already a huge celebrity due to the phenomenal success of her bestseller "Valley of the Dolls" when he was assigned to edit her next potboiler, "The love machine." He recounts many amusing anecdotes about how Susann merged the glitzy world of Hollywood with the staid world of publishing, forever changing it and paving the way for the Jackie Collins and Danielle Steeles of today. Korda's memoir of Susann is funnier, wittier, and more thorough than the disappointing cinematic slush adapted from it, "Isn't She Great" with Bette Midler and Nathan Lane (appropriately cast, but stuck with a dog of a script). The only frustration is reaching the end; this account really begins and ends with the author's relationship with Susann save for a paragraph or two of postscript. I will definitely pick up Barbara Seaman's biography of Susann, "Lovely Me," to find out more about this fascinating woman, but don't skip over this author's amusing and thoughtful reminiscence of a woman who used a lifetime full of showbiz experience to finally achieve the fame she never found as an actress or model by exposing Hollywood's seedy underbelly in print and hyping the book into middle America.

There seems to be a debate who discovered Jacqueline Susann. Michael Korda has asserted in an article for the New Yorker, describing his experiences editing "The Love Machine", and getting know the famous authoress who wrote the novel. He fails to mention in the article he gave an interview to Barbara Seamam back in 86 or 87. She is the woman who wrote "Lovely Me, The Life of Jacqueline Susann." He has said in a couple of interviews he never talked to Barbara Seaman, but Barbara has the tape of the interview. Let's set the record straight once and for all. Jacqueline Susann was all ready a famous and established bestselling author, "Valley of the Dolls" when Simon & Shuster bought the hardcover rights to "The Love Machine." And the only reason why they bought the novel was because the editor-in-chief at the time had moved on to another publishing house, taking many key people at Simon & Shuster with him. Upper Management at Simon & Shuster needed a guaranteed bestseller for an upcoming list because of an important stock-holders meeting. That is the reason why Simon and Shuster published "The Love Machine." And Jackie didn't fail to disappoint them. "The Love Machine" stayed number one for over five months on the New York Times Bestseller List. And she taught the people at Simon and Shuster how to promote and sell a novel. Along with her husband Irving Mansfield, they pioneered the art of selling the popular novel.