Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American author known for her best-selling novels. Her most notable work was Valley of the Dolls, a book that broke sales records and spawned a 1967 film and a short-lived TV series.

Early years

Jacqueline Susann was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Robert Susann, a portrait painter, and Rose Jans a schoolteacher. In school, Susann was an intelligent but lazy student. She scored the highest on her class's IQ test, a 140, prompting her mother to predict that she would someday become a good writer. Susann had other ideas and instead had aspirations of being an actress.Jacqueline Susann Susann's rocky relationship with her hard-to-please mother, as well as her starry-eyed view of her roguish father, would later be woven into her novels.