Valley of the Dolls Trailer B (1967)

The trailer for Valley of the Dolls.

Three young women meet when they embark on the beginning of their careers. Neely O'Hara (Duke) is a plucky kid with undeniable talent who acts in a Broadway play, the legendary actress Helen Lawson (Hayward) is the star of the play, and Jennifer North (Tate), a beautiful blonde with limited talent, is in the chorus. Anne Welles (Parkins) is a New England ingenue who recently arrived in New York City and works for a theatrical agency that represents Helen Lawson. The three women become fast friends, sharing the bonds of ambition and the tendency to fall in love with the wrong men.

O'Hara becomes a major success and moves to Hollywood to pursue a lucrative film career, but almost immediately falls victim to the eponymous "dolls": prescription drugs, particularly the barbiturates Seconal and Nembutal and various stimulants. Her career is shattered by her erratic behavior and she is committed to a sanitarium.

Meanwhile, Jennifer follows Neely to Hollywood, where she marries nightclub singer Tony Polar (Scotti) and becomes pregnant. When she learns that he has the hereditary condition Huntington's chorea, a fact his domineering half-sister and manager Miriam (Grant) had been concealing, Jennifer has an abortion. Faced with Tony's mounting medical expenses, Jennifer finds herself working in French "art films" (extremely tame soft-core pornography) to pay the bills.

Anne, having become a highly successful model, also falls under the allure of "dolls" to escape her doomed relationship with cad Lyon Burke (Burke), who has an affair with Neely. After Jennifer is diagnosed with breast cancer and told she must have a mastectomy, she commits suicide with an overdose of "dolls". She could not stand the idea of losing one of her breasts, as they were what got her some fame. Neely is released from the sanitarium and given a chance to resurrect her career, but the attraction of "dolls" and alcohol proves too strong and she spirals into a hellish decline.

Anne abandons drugs and her unfaithful lover and returns to New England. Lyon Burke ends his affair with Neely and asks Anne to marry him, but she refuses.