Anne Edwards

Life and career

She attended University of California, Los Angeles (1943–46) and Southern Methodist University (1947–48). A child performer on stage and radio, she began her writing career as a junior writer at MGM in 1944 and became a noted Hollywood screenwriter and television writer during the late 1940s and early 1950s. She lived in the UK and Europe from the mid-1950s until 1972. After returning to the United States in 1973, she lived in Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut before returning to Beverly Hills, California where she currently resides. Her film credits include co-writing the first draft of the screenplay for the film Funny Girl (1968) starring Barbra Streisand. She wrote her first novel, the best-selling The Survivors, in 1968 and subsequently (as of 2015) has written eight novels, sixteen biographies, three children's books, two memoirs (one with her late husband—composer-musicologist-pianist Stephen Citron) and an autobiography. She is a past president of the Authors Guild and currently serves on its Board of Directors. Her collection of literary manuscripts, papers, and related materials is now part of the Special Collections Department of the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA, where she has taught writing.

In an interview for Publishers Weekly, Edwards said, "An idea hits me, then I develop the story or, in the case of a biography, think of a person who exemplifies that theme. Vivien [Leigh], Judy [Garland] and Sonya [Tolstoy] were vastly interesting people and symbolic of certain things: Judy, the exploitation of a woman; Vivien, somebody who suffered from manic-depression; Sonya, an intelligent woman subjugated to a man who used her, drained her, made a villain of her."