Horrible to make, awful to watch, somehow

Some movies are bad. Some are so bad, they’re good.

And then there’s the movie so utterly awful, yet so compulsively watchable, it could only be “Valley of the Dolls.”

“Dolls! Dolls! Dolls” is Stephen Rebello’s look at what he hails as, “The most beloved bad book and movie of all time.” Like the 1966 novel and the 1967 film, this book is a fun romp of a trashy, flashy orgy of big egos, small talents, and guiltless excess.

The story began in Philadelphia, in 1918, with the birth of Jacqueline Susann. The spoiled daughter of a wealthy, womanizing artist, Susann moved to Manhattan after high school to have a go at Broadway. Daddy pulled some strings, and she had a part in “The Women.”

She was fired during rehearsals.

Eventually, Susann managed to worm her way back in for a walk-on. Later, she landed a few other tiny roles. She also found a press agent, Irving Mansfield. They married, and he got Susann in the gossip columns. Sometimes, he also worked at keeping her out of them.

Susann not only had a yen for men but a type – loud, older, showbizzy. It might have been part of what attracted her to Mansfield, who, a friend said, “was like something out of ‘Guys and Dolls.’ ” It certainly explained her affairs with Eddie Cantor and George Jessel.

Maybe it even partly explained her fling with Ethel Merman.

Whenever she was around the singer, Susann became “absolutely loony, like a 12-yearold,” said a mutual friend. Reportedly the women had a casual affair until Merman grew tired of the smothering attention. When Susann showed up outside her apartment building, screaming, “I love you,” the Mere called security.

At that point, Mansfield persuaded his wife to commit herself to a sanitarium. Afterward, Susann, 45, decided it was time to reinvent herself.

She had eked out a small corner of celebrity by doing local TV commercials, sometimes accompanied by her poodle. Now she wrote a quirky book about the dog, “Every Night, Josephine!” It became a surprise hit, helped along by Mansfield, who masterminded a tireless PR campaign.

The couple wondered. If they could make a book about a pooch into a best seller, what could they do with something juicy?

Sexy books such as “The Carpetbaggers” were huge successes. Susann studied them, then set out to write her own, drawing on years of gossip and the “three-girls-go-to-the-bigcity” plot of popular movies like “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

One character, Neely, would be a vulnerable singer, echoing the young Judy Garland. Another, the pretty but shallow Jennifer, would be modeled on the late actress Carole Landis. Anne, a smart and beautiful brunette, would be the author’s alter ego.

Like Susann, all would have unhappy love affairs and a hunger for pills. The book still needed a villain, though. So Susann created Helen Lawson, a brassy but fading Broadway diva, and finally took her sweet revenge on Merman.

“We weren’t talking before I wrote it,” Susann joked after publication. “Now we’re not talking, only louder.”

The novel became 1966’s biggest best seller and was bought for the movies. Mark Robson, a journeyman who shepherded “Peyton Place” to the screen, was chosen to direct. Casting, though, became a problem.

Mansfield often compared his wife’s book to “Gone With the Wind,” so Susann thought the adaptation should be just as star-driven. For Neely, she wanted Barbra Streisand. For Jennifer, “that new girl, Raquel Welch.” For Anne, “Grace Kelly … 15 pounds ago.” And for Helen Lawson, “Bette Davis, of course.”

The studio’s choices were far more modest. For Neely, Patty Duke. For Jennifer, shy starlet Sharon Tate. For Anne, the TV actress Barbara Parkins.

Susann — whose dream cast also included Elvis Presley, Paul Newman and Cary Grant — found the studio’s substitutes