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Rona Jaffe

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Author

The Resume

    (June 12, 1931-December 30, 2005)
    Born in Brooklyn, New York
    Associate Editor at Fawcett Publishing
    Wrote 15 more popular 'women's books,' usually with the quartet-of-women formula
    Known as the author of 'The Best of Everything' (1958) and 'Mazes and Monsters' (1981)
    Officially sold the film rights to 'Best of Everything' for $100,000 to Fox's Jerry Wald (Nov. 1958)
    Also wrote 'Away from Home' (1960), 'The Last of the Wizards' (1961), 'Mr. Right Is Dead' (1965), 'The Cherry in the Martini (1966), 'The Fame Game' (1969), 'The Other Woman' (1972), 'Family Secrets' (1974), 'The Last Chance' (1976), 'Class Reunion' (1979), After the Reunion (1985) 'An American Love Story' (1990), 'The Cousins' (1995), 'Five Women' (1997), 'The Road Taken' (2000), and 'The Room-Mating Season' (2003)
    Established the Rona Jaffe Foundation, which provides grants to emerging female writers (1995)

Why she might be annoying:

    She was a pioneer in the 'Chick-lit' novel genre.
    She called marriage a 'rat race to the altar.'
    Her best known book was described as 'strictly pre-Women's Lib' and 'the urban answer to Peyton Place.'
    She called the 20th Century Fox staff discussing the casting of the film adaptation as 'the great virgin conference.'
    She complained about the film adaptation changing Diane Baker's abortion to a 'miscarriage,' calling it 'more amoral than what I originally wrote.'
    Camille Paglia specifically denounced the book as the precursor to Sex and the City; claiming, in both cases, that the female leads were 'at the mercy of cads.'
    She was accused of basing 'Mazes and Monsters' on apocryphal stories of students entering university steam tunnels to play D&D.
    She was also accused of reinforcing the notion that role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons encouraged devil worship and occultism.
    She was mistakenly believed to have had a walk-on cameo in the 'Best of Everything' film, when it was actually the winner of the 'Miss Best of Everything' contest, for whom she wrote the scene for at the last minute (she expressed her intentions to have a walk-on role, but it never happened).

Why she might not be annoying:

    She looked like Marlo Thomas as a young woman.
    Her two best-known works provided movie roles for both an aging Joan Crawford and a young Tom Hanks.
    'Best of Everything' was actually quite modern for its time, in terms of its depiction of women in the workplace.
    'Best of Everything' was also one of the first books to touch on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace.
    She was involved in the 'Best of Everything' film's creative process. One day, the production staff was stumped as to how Suzy Parker would meet the Louis Jourdan character.
    She suggested having the two meet at a party hosted by Joan Crawford's character. Everyone said 'how clever! How did you think of that so fast?' She replied, 'well, it was in the book...'
    She wrote cultural 'Sex and the Single Girl' style pieces for Cosmopolitan at the same time the editorship came under 'the single girl' herself, Helen Gurley Brown.
    She aged well, resembling Marilu Henner, Stefanie Powers, and Katherine Helmond later in life.
    She died on vacation in London, from complications related to the cancer she was suffering from.
    She said of her eponymous Foundation, 'all writers need support, but many women in early career have fewer resources available to them and often many demands made upon them. It gives me great pleasure to help some of them make their way at this early stage.'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 25 Votes: 36.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 14 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 308 Votes: 53.57% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 95 Votes: 53.68% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 122 Votes: 84.43% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 9 Votes: 22.22% Annoying