Monday News: Roberta Leigh dies, Exodus banned in Egypt, Amazon Prime’s happy holiday, and eclectic cookbook
Publishing NewsAmazon / censorship / cookbook / films / Harlequin / historical-accuracy / Mills and Boon / obituary / Prime / Roberta Leigh19 Comments
Roberta Leigh – obituary – If you were a fan of Mills and Boon/Harlequin in the 1950s through the 1970s, you might remember Roberta Leigh, who penned over 160 Romances under several different names. In between, she ran her own film company and created a number of successful ventures, from a YA magazine called Boyfriend to puppet-based television series Sarah & Hoppity and Space Patrol. She initially became interested in writing Romances as a teenager, when she noticed how popular the books were among women at the local library. The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who escaped the pogroms by moving to London. Leigh had a fascinating, varied, and highly successful career, both in and outside the entertainment industry. She lived to 87.
Towards the end of the 1960s, however, she became increasingly frustrated at having to deal with television companies reluctant to back new ideas, and in 1971 she rang Mills & Boon and returned to romantic fiction.
Over the next 30 years Roberta Leigh published well over 100 titles for a variety of publishers, many of them featuring strong female lead characters. In one record-breaking year, 1977, she produced 24 romances, completing one 70,000-word book in 10 days by dictating 2,500 words an hour to two secretaries. “It would be more but they can’t keep up,” she explained. She also wrote as Rachel Lindsay, Janey Scott and Rosella Lake. “Some people like to go to bed with a man,” she remarked. “I like to go to bed with a manuscript.” –Telegraph
Egypt bans ‘inaccurate’ Exodus film – Although I am hardly a fan of state censorship, I find it more than a little amusing that Exodus, Ridley Scott’s whitewashed pseudo-Biblical epic film, has also been accused of historical inaccuracy in Egypt, where the film has been banned. Morocco also apparently refused to screen the film. Also, the pic that the BBC ran with the article shows the films two stars — Joe Edgerton and Christian Bale — looking vey, very white. Has anyone seen the movie? I’m curious to know what people think Scott’s agenda was with this one (I’m still pissed about the ending to Thelma and Louise).
The head of the censorship board said these included the film’s depiction of Jews as having built the Pyramids, and that an earthquake, not a miracle by Moses, caused the Red Sea to part. . . .
There have also been reports that the film is banned in Morocco.
Although the state-run Moroccan Cinema Centre (CCM) had given the film the green light, Moroccan business website Medias24.com said that officials had decided to ban the movie from being screened the day before its premiere. –BBC News
Amazon says 10 million new customers tried Prime over the holidays – So despite the recent increase in Amazon Prime’s membership fee, the program may not be suffering too much, depending on how many of the 10 million people who tried Prime over the holidays decide to extend past their trial membership period. Apparently the Fire TV Stick is doing pretty well, too.
The online retailer also said that same-day delivery saw huge growth this year. Customers ordered “10 times as many items” with same-day delivery compared to 2013, but in typical Amazon fashion, we’re left without any hard numbers. The company’s quest to provide instant gratification to its customers will ramp up further in 2015, according to CEO Jeff Bezos. “We are working hard to make Prime even better and expanding the recently launched Prime Now to additional cities in 2015,” he said in a statement. -The Verge
Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Macaroni and Cheese – If you’re still looking for a holiday gift for a literature-loving cook, the price of Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe Book has dropped from $3.99 (in June) to .99 (and free via Kindle Unlimited). Although the blurb seems a little too nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ of Imperial Russia. Oh, and there’s an additional recipe for Mac and Cheese posed on the Open Culture site. –Open Culture
So sad for Roberta Leigh. I read a ton of her books when I was younger and really enjoyed them. I didn’t know she wrote under Rachel Lindsay too.
I’m moroccan, and I heathe reason why the movie was banned is the depiction of God as a hu
@Junne:
Here’s the rest of my sentence:
I’m moroccan, and I heard the reason why the movie was banned is the depiction of God as a child.
Islam bans any human representation of God, that’s why you’re never going to see paintings with people in it in mosques.
Someone else here who hated the Thelma and Louise ending. It wasn’t a grand gesture, it was stupid.
I still have some original Roberta Leigh books in my Harlequin drawer. Sorry to hear of her passing.
In advance of this afternoon’s Daily Deals post, Carina Press is offering 10 Kindle daily deals for $0.99-$1.99 each. Prices valid December 29, 2014 ONLY. http://carinapress.com/blog/2014/12/kindle-daily-deals-december-29-2014/
Re: Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Macaroni and Cheese: Vegetable sauce? Huh, might have to try that sometime.
So it wasn’t just me that hated Thelma and Louise’s ending? It never made any sense to me at all.
And I still haven’t seen Exodus yet. From friends who saw it besides the whitewashing they said the whole movie was just awful and Joel Edgerton’s bad tan job was distracting.
“(I’m still pissed about the ending to Thelma and Louise).”
Amen!
I’m guessing he needed a paycheck.
I loved Thelma and Louise. I saw the ending as a metaphorical escape from oppression. I also saw the film as being in the tradition of movies like Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the outlaw heroes die at the end. The freeze frame with the car suspended in the air allowed me to see it both ways at the same time, and I loved that.
I’m curious what ending you wanted to see? Thelma and Louise getting to Mexico and hiding there, or going to prison?
@Justine: There are also HQNs in the daily deal. Watch out for the Maya Banks books, they’re reissues of her HQN Desires.
I don’t understand the objections to the Exodus movie casting. It is clearly the way hollywood does business. Did you notice all the Greek people in 300 and Troy? Not to mention all of the Jewish people in the 1960 Exodus? Actually, I really don’t know about that one and only remember Sal Mineo.
The same type of casting worked for Ridley Scott in other movies and I agree with Janine; business as usual.
I freely admit that I don’t know where these objections first arose but I am cynical and question why this type of outcry against a normalised practice.
I will be interested to see whether future movies (here I assume there will be blockbusters made in the US in the future) will use people with a similar background as the character they are to portray.
Confirmed Bachelor by Roberta Leigh is still one of my favourite early M&B books.
@MaryK: Ah, thanks for the heads up!
@Janine: To me, it’s not liberating to see two women likely die to escape oppression – that’s REALITY for too many women. Even the ambiguity was not enough for me. I wanted them to survive and thrive, because for me that would have been subversive.
It’s like what I always say about Hardy’s Tess: I know that at some level the novel is criticizing the way women are regarded and treated and provided with limited choices. But at some point for me it crossed over from critique to replication of that mindset by victimizing Tess so soundly. It’s a fine line, and it won’t be set at the same point for everyone, but the end of T&L tripped it for me.
@wendy: “I am cynical and question why this type of outcry against a normalised practice.”
Because a lot of us have finally Had It with what passes for “normal” in our culture: Heroes are White Europeans. Women should shut up and agree when men talk. POC should always jump to obey when confronted by someone wearing a uniform. Etc.
Speaking only for myself, I think we’re waaaay past due for a new “normal.” As Ursula K LeGuin said just a month ago when accepting the National Book Award:
So why not use our words to change the art of film as well?
@wendy:
If you want change sometimes you have to speak up. Otherwise a number of things will continue to be business as usual (hapax gave some excellent examples).
There was a time Hollywood used white actress to play Native American, African Americans and even Asians. Only after protests and people speaking up did this “business as usual” practice halt. Hollywood had a thing for the tragic mulatto trope, so actresses like Ava Gardner (Julie in Showboat) Jeanne Crain (Pinky) Julie London (Night of the Quarter Moon) Yvonne DeCarlo (Band of Angels) Natalie Wood (Kings Go Forth) Debra Paget (Broken Arrow) Louise Rainer (The Good Earth) among others who helped popularize the “exotic” taboo of having a minority in a movie, but not really.
I’ll make it even simpler. Suppose you took your hard earned money and went to the theater, only many of Shakespears’s plays still had the parts for women being played by men.
It’s called change. And sometimes change is good.
Also, I wouldn’t call anything Hollywood does as a “normalised practice” once you look at the studio demographics.
It’s almost important to note that while Exodus, after 3 weeks has only made a little over 52 mil in 3 weeks domestically, It has done better business overseas (over 96 million as of this post) but It’ll need all that overseas money and DVD sales, etc, to recoup the reported $140 mil it cost to make the film.
just think of how much more it could’ve make during the X-Mas season in the US if the seats were filled with the groups Ridley Scott pissed off. Especially since he reportedly said he made the movie in part, in memory of his late brother, director Tony Scott (who often enlisted Denzel Washington as his leading man).
Link: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=exodus.htm
@wikkidsexycool:
That 140 mil may be a conservative estimate of how much the picture cost to make. I’m not sure if marketing is also included in that figure.
@ Wendy
“I don’t understand the objections to the Exodus movie casting.”
I haven’t seen the film, so take this with a boulder-sized grain of salt (and please correct me if I’m wrong), but from what I’ve seen of the trailer and from bits of chatter I’ve picked up from various places around the Internet, a lot of people are unsettled by the fact that POC are primarily depicted as being subservient or slaves. The fact that the two protagonists of the film are (inaccurately) both portrayed by white men doesn’t help matters. Combine these two things and I’m sure you can see why this film makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
“I freely admit that I don’t know where these objections first arose but I am cynical and question why this type of outcry against a normalised practice.”
Um, have you been hiding under a rock for the past decade? Just off the top of my head, I can recall the furor over the casting of white actors for poc characters in the Avatar the Last Airbender movie, the outcry against the whitewashing of YA covers, and the huge scandals that erupted when fashion magazines put white models in blackface makeup. From what I can see, casting white characters in POC roles isn’t considered acceptable anymore in American culture.
To me, Exodus looks like yet another crappy disaster-porn film that is also attempting to pander to the religious crowd. With any luck, in about six months time, we’ll all have forgotten it.
@Kitty Wiley: Whoever it’s pandering to, it’s not the religious crowd. From what I’ve read, the “religious” parts were deliberately screwed up. It sounds like an all around disaster.
@Robin/Janet: I saw the movie as an indictment of that social reality. I’m curious, did you see the movie when it first came out in the early 1990s? Because to me it meant the world that a woman had written a script that dealt with just how oppressive our society was, and that said script had actually gotten produced. I think for Thelma and Louise to survive and thrive would have undercut the message that American society doesn’t make it easy for women to do that. This was the era of the Anita Hill hearings and of Susan Faludi’s book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, and the movie felt very timely in that moment.
ETA: I somehow missed the second paragraph of your comment before. It didn’t feel that way to me, because to me the movie felt situated in Thelma and Louise’s POV, and invited the audience to thrill at their rebellion. But I have had that experience with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, so I understand your viewpoint.