What happens to bestsellers when they get old? They date, darling: at least, at the ripe old age of thirty-eight this onetime cult favourite is showing a few fine lines and wrinkles. In its portrayal of the pill-popping, bed-hopping underbelly of the Hollywood dream machine, however, not to mention its no-nonsense acceptance of homosexuality, it must have been way, way ahead of its time. The sex scenes which were regarded as controversial in 1966 are pretty tame - and disarmingly brisk - by today's standards, but if contemporary film biographies are to believed, Susann's picture of the bitchiness of the rich and famous is as accurate as ever.
