Robert H. Harris

Millionaire Jewish entrepreneur Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell) benvolently rules his financial empire from a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan.

Millionaire Jewish entrepreneur Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell) benvolently rules his financial empire from a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan.

Millionaire Jewish entrepreneur Arthur Goldman (Maximilian Schell) benevolently rules his financial empire from a penthouse apartment overlooking Manhattan. Seemingly at the edge of sanity, Goldman holds forth on everything from Papal edicts to ex-wives, from baseball to his family's massacre in a Nazi concentration camp. When Goldman remarks on a blue Mercedes continuously parked outside his building, Goldman's captive audience of assistant (Lawrence Pressman) and chauffeur (Henry Brown) dismiss their boss' anxiety as encroaching paranoia. But each of Goldman's passionate, seemingly capricious ravings are transformed into a shocking, inadvertent deposition when Israeli agents capture Goldman and put him on trial as Adolph Dorf, the commandant of the concentration camp where Goldman's family was supposedly exterminated.

Lured by their dreams of fame and fortune, three ambitious young women enter the world of show business and discover how easy it is to sink into a celebrity nightmare of ego, alcohol and 'pills' - the beloved "dolls." A prim New Englander (Barbara Parkins) unexpectedly skyrockets from her job as secretary in a talent agency to a glamorous TV model. A determined singer (Patty Duke) finds that Hollywood success can also spell self-destruction. And a beautiful sex symbol (Sharon Tate) is torn between the money commands and the shame of feeling exploited. Based on Jacqueline Susann's phenomenal best-seller about the underside of Hollywood, this fascinating melodrama was once seen as a shocking behind-the-scenes look at how show business creates instant stars, destroys romances and changes personalities forever.