杰奎琳·苏珊

杰奎琳·苏珊（Jacqueline Susann，1918年8月20日—1974年9月21日）是一位美国小说家和演员。她是小说娃娃谷的作者。苏珊曾经一度接连出版3部小说后，这3部小说都登上了纽约时报畅销书榜榜首。

苏珊娜因持续咳嗽而住院检查。检查结果显示，她的右肺有结节性病变；她又来到其他医院接受支气管镜检查和活检。1973年1月18日，她被确诊患有肺癌。

后来苏珊的癌症扩散了，1974年8月20日，她又住院了。在昏迷了几天后，她于9月21日去世。

Jacqueline Susann (August 20, 1918 – September 21, 1974) was an American novelist and actress. Her novel Valley of the Dolls (1966) is one of the best-selling books in publishing history. With her two subsequent works, The Love Machine (1969) and Once Is Not Enough (1973), Susann became the first author to have three novels top The New York Times Best Seller list consecutively.

Early years

Jacqueline Susan was born on August 20, 1918, at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, the only child of a Jewish couple: Robert Susan, a Wilno, Imperial Russia (now Vilnius, Lithuania)-born portrait painter, and his wife, Rose (née Jans), a public school teacher. It was Rose who added the second "n" to her husband's surname in order to make pronunciation easier for her students; Robert Susan retained the original spelling. Because his surname was never legally changed, his daughter was born Jacqueline Susan, as confirmed in the 1920 and 1930 US census, and her father's record in the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007. Nevertheless, she used her mother's version of the family surname.

As a child, her teachers reported that she was an inattentive but imaginative student. In the fifth grade, she scored 140 on an IQ test, the highest in her school. An only child and devoted to her father, Susann was determined to carry on the family name. She decided to be an actress, despite the advice of a teacher who said, "Jackie should be a writer. She breaks all the rules, but it works." In 1936, after graduating from West Philadelphia High School, she left for New York to pursue an acting career. Her father told her, "If you're going to be an actress, be a good actress. Be a people watcher."

Stage career

In New York, on June 2, 1937, aged 18, Susann landed a small role in the Broadway company of The Women, the "caustic" comedy of manners by Clare Boothe that had opened on December 26, 1936, and would run for 657 performances. She subsequently appeared in such Broadway shows as The Girl from Wyoming (1938), My Fair Ladies (1941), Blossom Time (revival, 1943), Jackpot (1944), and in A Lady Says Yes (1945), which starred Hollywood siren Carole Landis. Only one of her shows following The Women was a hit: Banjo Eyes (1941), starring Eddie Cantor, ran for 126 performances.

Together with a friend, actress Beatrice Cole, Susann wrote a play called The Temporary Mrs. Smith, a comedy about a one-time movie actress whose former husbands interfere with her scheme to marry a man of wealth. Retitled Lovely Me, the play, directed by actress Jessie Royce Landis, and starring Luba Malina and Mischa Auer, opened on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre on December 25, 1946. Said to be an "audience-pleaser," the play nonetheless closed after just 37 performances. Four years later, Susann and Cole wrote another play, Cock of the Walk, which was to open on Broadway with Oscar-winning actor James Dunn. For reasons that remain unclear, the play was not produced.

In 1970, Susann made a brief return to the stage when she appeared in Blanche Yurka's off-Broadway revival of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot. Clive Barnes in The New York Times panned the production; of the cast, he praised only Yurka, but he did mention that "Jacqueline Susann looks a great deal prettier than the publicity stills on her book jackets might lead you to believe."