Its on DVD now

I grew up loving "Valley of the Dolls" and read all of Jackie's books when I was a teenager (yes, including "Yargo" and "Dolores" and "Every Night Josephine"). I didn't have a strong desire to read, "The Love Machine" then and figured I would read it when I was an adult. When the dvd came out this year I knew it was the perfect excuse to return to Jackie decades later. I must say I was very surprised by the book. While you couldn't call it literature, it held my interest and I really cared about the characters. It was very coarse in the beginning and rushed at other parts, but still it was a much richer experience than what I was expecting after having become a snobby reader in my adulthood. I knew the movie version was supposed to be awful. But that's what they say about "...Dolls" and I love it. So I was hoping I would be pleasantly surprised again. Wow. Did Jack Haley Jr. do a hatchet job on the novel. There were so many bad choices made you have to blame him. If someone were to take this novel today and really work on the screenplay, this could be a fun diversion for fans of, "Mad Men."

No, Jackie was not a great writer. But she was a great entertainer. The movie was much more homophobic and misogynistic than the novel. How do you combine all the gay characters into one, as if to say, they're all alike?! How do you not explain Robin Stone's fear of abandonment in the middle of the night? How do you dilute the love of his life into a meaningless character? How do you cast an actress in her prime to play a woman in menopause? If I had seen this movie first I would've never have read the book. I'm glad I waited all these years to read, "The Love Machine." Jackie could make a book move and poured a lot of herself into her stories. The book is underrated pop fiction of it's time. Remake please!