44 June 27 • 2019
jn

soul

of blessed memory

J

udith Krantz, one of the 
best-selling female novelists of 
all time, has died.
Krantz died on Saturday, June 22, 
2019, at her home in Bel Air, Calif., 
at age 91.
According to the Jewish Women’
s 
Archives, Krantz is the third-largest 
selling female novelist in history. 
“
Although her goal is for her 
books to provide escape and enter-
tainment, she does try to make 
some serious points and has woven 
such issues as anti-Semitism and 
the German occupation into her 
novels. All of her heroines are work-
ing women, and she has said that 
the subtext of all her books is wom-
en’
s opportunities,” according to the 
archives.
She graduated from Wellesley 
College with a B.A. in 1948. 

She moved to Paris after grad-
uation and worked as a fashion 
publicist, returning after a year 
to New York to work for Good 
Housekeeping magazine, where she 
became fashion editor. She spent 
more than a quarter-decade as a 
magazine journalist, writing for 
Macleans, McCalls, Ladies Home 
Journal and Cosmopolitan.
Her first novel, Scruples, was pub-
lished the year that she turned 50.
She met her husband, Steven 
Krantz, a producer and writer, in 
1953 at a party hosted by her high 
school friend Barbara Walters. They 
were married for 53 years until he 
died in 2007.
More than 80 million copies of 
her 10 novels are in print in more 
than 50 languages. Seven of her 
novels have also been adapted for 

television as either films or mini-
series, with her husband serving 
as executive producer for many of 
them.
Her novels were historical-
ly accurate due to her hours of 
research, according to Deadline.
com. “Krantz’
s novels had a rare 
combination for commercial fiction: 
intelligence, complex characters, 
intricate plots and a wicked sense of 
humor. But it was the strong women 
she wrote about that captivated her 
audience in a whole new way,” the 
Deadline obituary said. ■

Headstones Desecrated 
in Estonia

Several headstones were knocked over and a dog 
was let loose at a Jewish cemetery in Tallinn, 
Estonia.
 The incident occurred June 22 or June 23 in 
the Baltic nation’
s capital city, according to a 
report by the Israel-based Coordination Forum 
for Countering Anti-Semitism.
On June 24, the organization’
s website pub-
lished pictures from the cemetery showing 
overturned headstones and canine footprints 
on earth atop a burial plot. The pictures and 
report did not mention any hate graffiti or other 
indications that the incident was a hate crime.
Estonia, which has very few anti-Semitic inci-
dents, is home to about 2,500 Jews. ■

CNAAN LIPHSHIZ JTA

The aftermath of desecration of graves at a Jewish cemetery 

in Tallinn, Estonia, on June 22, 2019

CFCA

Best-selling novelist 
Judith Krantz dies at 91

MARCY OSTER JTA

Judith Krantz in a publicity photo accompa-

nying her final novel, The Jewels of Tessa 

Kent (1998)

HARRY LANGDON/CROWN

