In a series of remarkable and successful memoirs, and in much of her fiction, the writer Jill Robinson, who has died aged 88, drew on the story of her own life, growing up a princess among Hollywood royalty, navigating the capricious path between the spotlight of exalted privilege and the shadow of the kingdom’s call on her parents’ attentions coming before her own. Her work often focused on the pain of trying to adapt to the “distorting power” Hollywood fantasies have on real life.
Her childhood friends were the offspring of stars, agents and studio executives; and their parents paid court to hers. Her father was Dore Schary, an Oscar-winning screenwriter (for Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy) who rose to become president of MGM, Hollywood’s most illustrious studio. Her mother, Miriam (nee Svet), was an artist, and dinners and parties at their mansion in Brentwood, Los Angeles, drew the elite. Jill collapsed with a fever when she met Clark Gable. At one party, Humprhey Bogart proclaimed that the 17-year-old Jill was the only virgin in the room.
