​​​​​​​Behold The Valley of the Dolls

by David James Mansour 

"It's all make believe, isn't it?"
~ Marilyn Monroe

“I’m not nutty, I am just hooked on dolls!”
~ Neely O’Hara in Valley of the Dolls

Doll of the Month​

You’ve got to climb Cowles Mountain to behold the Valley of the Dolls.

     In tribute, I take a spin on the opening tagline, “You’ve got to climb to the top of Mt. Everest to reach the Valley of the Dolls,” from Jacqueline Susann’s wildly popular, Valley of the Dolls, the biggest-selling novel of 1966. (Cowles Mountain is the highest point at 1,593 feet in my home city of San Diego). 
     Unlike Susann’s book, you won’t find the rise and fall of Hollywood starlets, amidst pill-popping and booze-swigging, catfights and scandal. You will find dolls however. Over a thousand Barbie and Ken dolls—fabulously posed for the camera by an adoring collector who himself has gone totally beyond the valley of the dolls.  

Before you make the climb to behold the Valley of the Dolls let’s start at the beginning…

—The opening to David Mansour's Behold the Valley of the Dolls

​All the dolls you can handle—and more!
From 1960’s Ponytail Barbie to 2023’s dolls from the Barbie movie (and six decades of dolls in-between), David Mansour's Behold the Valley of the Dolls covers 64 years of Barbie. Showcasing 460 doll lines with over a thousand dolls photographed, it’s the history of Barbie done portrait style!​

Yep, I'm a "Barbie obsessive, and honored to be featured in The Guardian newspaper as one of the "people for whom pink is a way of life."

(Read the full July 24, 2023 story by clicking on either photo above.)​​

Writer and photographer David Mansour is hailed as an “Aficionado of American Pop Culture,” “Pop Culture Expert,” “Man of Pop!,” and “Barbie Guy,” after he appeared on the Discovery Channel’s Pop Nation TV show to talk about his favorite doll. His obsession with Barbie has been for a lifetime, which is a longtime since he fittingly shares the same birth year as her boyfriend, Ken. In 1987, a birthday gift of Barbie and the Rockers led to an extensive collection of dolls, toys, games, and pop culture memorabilia, inspiring David to write the book, From ABBA to Zoom: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia of the Late 20th Century. 

     In March 2018, he began a project of photographing his entire Barbie collection, over a thousand dolls captured in beautiful portraits. Inquisitive about the dolls he was photographing, David, forever a researcher at heart, took note of each doll’s importance in the world of Barbie. This six-year project is the genesis for Behold the Valley of the Dolls, which illustrates the history of Barbie through his photographs. 

     David resides in sunny San Diego, California with husband John Bode, a family of adorable pets, and his Barbie dolls. 

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"Sparkle, Barbie, Sparkle!"