Jill Schary Robinson is a memoirist, journalist, and novelist, the son of Dore Schary, a head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1950s, and his son, Jeremy Schary. Jeremy Zimmer, founder and CEO of United Talent Agency, has died. She is 88 years old.
Shari Robinson died Saturday at her home in Beverly Hills, her family announced.
In 1963, she wrote her first memoir Thousands of castswhich chronicled her coming of age during Hollywood’s golden age, followed by 1972’s Thank you for the ruby, now please pass the moon and 1974 bed time story.
bed time story Received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and became a 1980 NBC television movie cry for lovestarring Susan Blakely and Powers Booth, tells a heartwarming story about love and addiction.
“No one better describes the mesmerizing and distorting power of DreamWorks over our lives than she does,” New York Times once wrote. john ral in new yorker Call her the “Whitman on the Sunset Strip” Vanity Fair’Dominick Dunne praised her for “a knack for constructing beautiful sentences.”
From 1978-83, she published the novel lost, Dr. Rocker and the Age of Longing and Follow me throughout Paris.
She was born in Los Angeles on May 30, 1936, one of three children. boys town (1938) and the 1958 Tony Award for Best Play Campobello sunriseOne of the rare writers to run a movie studio, he led production at MGM from 1948-56. Her mother was the painter Miriam Sweet.
Schary Robinson began his career as a copywriter for Foote, Cone & Belding, where he studied under Helen Gurley Brown. In the 1960s, she wrote about women’s issues for Brown Publishing metropolis and covered political trials soho weeklyand on Los Angeles radio, she hosted a talk show on KLAC and interviewed political and film industry figures for KPFK.
She moved to London in the 1980s and wrote a column for Americans in Britain. daily telegraph. She interviews Lily Tomlin and Barbara Walters, among others, vanity fair Roman Polanski’s story was included in George Plimpton’s 1988 book Best American Screenplay.
She continued in the 1990s star country and forgetting the pastwhich vanity fair Described as “a shocking chronicle of her journey to regain her memory”. In 2002, she co-authored Falling in love when you thought you were over: a love story With her third husband Stuart Shaw.
Selections of her works, Go find outpublished in 2021 and her last novel, go home canyoncame out last year.
In 2005, Schary Robinson received a lifetime grant to develop the non-profit Wimpole Street Writers, a community for writers to exchange ideas in London that she founded , and continued running it after she moved back to Los Angeles.
Through this project, she conducted workshops for the Veterans Administration and hosted dinners for young writers, with the only rule being “no pages, no dinner.” She was also a devoted and long-time member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Her family noted: “Her twin passions of writing and sobriety kept her connected to many people and she was able to impact them by sharing her experiences.”
In 2009, she was instrumental in the effort to save the Woodland Hills Motion Picture and Television Fund nursing home.
During her career, she also worked for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, chicago tribune, Washington post as well as the American and French versions. Fashion.
Her first two husbands were Jon Zimmer and Jeremiah Robinson. In addition to her son, survivors include her daughter Johanna, eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
