Scandalous Women locations with Gill Paul

Submitted: 22nd September 2024

Scandalous Women locations with Gill Paul

A wonderfully fact and fiction mix from Gill Paul and a walk around the locations in New York, London and LA publishing world.

Scandalous Women locations with Gill Paul…..

Locations in Scandalous Women

Scandalous Women is about Jacqueline Susann, author of the hugely popular Valley of the Dolls, and Jackie Collins, author of 32 bestselling novels over her long career.

It’s also about the misogyny of the publishing industry in the 1960s when they both started out.–So, it’s like a version of Mad Men but set in publishing rather than advertising.

Jackie Collins c) Wikipedia

Jackie Collins wanted to be an author from the age of nine, and used to charge school friends to read sex scenes she’d written, . However, she was thirty before her first novel, The World is Full of Married Men came out.

By then she had two daughters and had survived a difficult first marriage. Her writing career took off at this point!

After her first New York Times number one bestseller, Hollywood Wives (1983), she and her family moved to LA. It was here where she became famous for writing veiled portraits of showbiz friends in her novels. Over her long career, her novels sold 500 million copies.

Jacqueline Susann 1951 (c) Wikipedia

Locations in Scandalous Women

Jacqueline Susann deliberately sat down to write a bestseller, and made sure Valley of the Dolls flew to the top of the charts. Reviews were dire so she invented the author book tour, visiting bookshops from coast to coast and signing copies for booksellers and readers. She had a background in acting and always gave a sparkling performance on TV chat shows. Dolls sold 31 million copies and her next two novels, The Love Machine and Once is Not Enough, both went to number one, making her the first author to achieve this three times in a row.

Locations in Scandalous Women

Bernie Geis Associates was the publisher of Valley of the Dolls, and this is the location of the office where Nancy, the third main protagonist in Scandalous Women, started her career as an editorial assistant. First she had to pass the interview by sliding down a firemen’s pole that linked two floors inside; then she had to put up with misogynist colleagues patronising and groping her, and authors who thought it was part of her job to sleep with them.

Locations in Scandalous Women

The Hotel Navarro, on the south side of Central Park, is where Jacqueline Susann lived with her husband Irving and her poodle Josephine. It was an apartment hotel. Here, they could order room service, and cleaners came in to clear up after them. Jacqueline was adamant that she would never do housework.

In the 1970s, it was home base for the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and many more. It was later renovated into the Ritz-Carlton and is now an apartment building. But you can feel the history in the air!

Locations in Scandalous Women

There are several Manhattan locations in the novel. From the Colony Club, where Nancy introduced Jacqueline and Jackie, to Toots Shor’s, where Nancy used to meet George.

Then we have Danny’s Hideaway, where Jacqueline and Irving liked to eat,.

The only one of these that’s still open is Sardi’s where Jackie and Nancy had lunch:

Locations in Scandalous Women

The Beverly Hills Hotel was Jacqueline and Irving’s home from home on the West Coast, and a couple of scenes in the novel take place there. She used to feed a family of stray cats out the back and enjoyed floating in the swimming pool, or drinking cocktails alongside it.

Locations in Scandalous Women

Tramp nightclub (40 Jermyn Street, London), which opened in 1969, was co-owned by Jackie Collins’ husband Oscar. The opening night party was attended by a host of celebrities, including Jackie’s sister Joan, Michael Caine, Peter Sellers and Natalie Wood.

The club rules of ‘no journalists and no photography’ meant they could let their hair down. Jackie visited often and urged celebs to tell her their stories, which she then wrote about in her novels. Tramp is still open today.

Thanks Gill. A fascinating read and a brilliant story!