Jacqueline Susann

Jacqueline Susann was an American novelist and actress. Her iconic 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. 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 accurate pronunciation easier for her students. Robert Susan retained the original spelling. Jacqueline's father’s surname was never legally changed, so she was born Jacqueline Susan, as confirmed in the 1920 US census, 1930 US census, and her father's record in the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007. However, she used her mother's version of the family surname. As a child, 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, 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 fathe