Scruples Novel Pdf

[Myz Headlee]

Thenovel details the life story of protagonist Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop ("Billy"), as she evolves from the overweight "poor relation" in an aristocratic Boston Brahmin family to become a thin, stylish woman who is left a vast fortune by the death of her much older first husband and who founds an upscale Beverly Hills boutique called "Scruples".

Born the only child of a distinguished scientist, who is a member of the venerable Winthrop family but must work for a living, Wilhelmina is nicknamed "Honey", a diminutive of her middle name. In her infancy, her mother dies and she is raised by her distant father and a housekeeper. She grows up isolated from her extended family and, with the help of the housekeeper, turns to food for comfort. Around the time she graduates from high school, she is left $10,000 by a maiden aunt, who begs her to spend it foolishly while she is still young. In a last-ditch effort to "find herself", Honey goes to live in Paris with a French family. There, she undergoes a transformation of both body and soul, first changing her name to Billy, then losing weight, and then gaining Parisian style under the guidance of Liliane, the elegant Frenchwoman who is her hostess. She is also introduced to Edouard, Liliane's relative. It is her first sexual affair, but when the aristocratic but impecunious Edouard discovers that Billy has no money, he shows his true colors and ends the relationship.

Billy returns to America and to a Boston stunned by her new body and beauty. Feeling "not in her skin", and unwilling, at 19, to start college, she moves to New York to attend the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school and prepare to earn a living. She meets Jessica, her New York roommate, who teaches her about men and sex and becomes her closest friend, and embarks on a whirlwind adventure of sexual discovery. When she graduates from Katie Gibbs, she is hired by Ikehorn Enterprises, and during a business meeting in Barbados, she sleeps with and subsequently marries the CEO, Ellis Ikehorn, who is far older than she. The next several years are happy ones, as Billy and Ellis live a glamorous life filled with parties, homes all over the world, and regular appearances on the Best-Dressed List. Ellis, however, suffers two debilitating strokes, and Billy moves them from Manhattan to Bel Air, for the better climate.

But Billy lives as a recluse in their enormous house and looks aimlessly for some purpose in her life, eventually developing a compulsion to shop in Beverly Hills. Seven years after Ellis' stroke, he dies, leaving Billy an enormous fortune but also an enormous amount of guilt. Billy realizes that she will never find "what she is looking for" so she decides to open a luxury boutique called "Scruples." She hires Valentine O'Neil to design couture clothing for the customers and Valentine's close friend, Spider Elliot, a former fashion photographer who appoints himself the Style Director and arbiter of elegance. The meeting, various romances, and career vicissitudes of Valentine and Spider, along with the development of their relationship, comprise a major subplot in the novel.

The story ultimately develops around Billy's second marriage to Vito Orsini, a film producer, a film that he is making, and then around the Oscars. A second subplot concerns Billy's new friend Dolly Moon, a flamboyant supporting actress in Vito's current film project, Mirrors, Dolly's pregnancy, her relationship with an accountant, and a burglary at Price Waterhouse, where the Oscar ballots are tabulated and the results stored. The story ends at the Oscars, where Billy awaits the announcement that Vito's film has won and Dolly dramatically goes into labor. At the same time, Spider and Valentine realize that their friendship has turned into love.

The novel was adapted as a hugely successful television miniseries in 1980, starring Lindsay Wagner as Billy, Barry Bostwick as Spider, Kim Cattrall as Melanie, Marie-France Pisier as Valentine, Connie Stevens as Maggie, and film legend Gene Tierney (in her final role) as Harriet Toppington.

Due to the success of the mini-series, a pilot for a potential weekly series (featuring a different cast) was produced the following year, but was unsuccessful. In this version, Shelley Smith played Billy Ikehorn, and Dirk Benedict played Spider.

Another pilot for a potential Scruples series was made in 2012 by Warner Bros. Television for ABC, though this also was unsuccessful when the network opted to pass on the project. Co-produced by Natalie Portman, it starred Claire Forlani as Billy. The cast also included Chad Michael Murray as Spider, Karine Vanasse as Valentine, Gary Cole as Royce Franklin, Hart Bochner as Ellis Ikehorn, and Mimi Rogers as Harriet Toppington.[1]

The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to continue to present new volumes in our Catholic Women Writers series, which will shed new light on prose work of Catholic women writers from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Josephine Mary Hope-Scott Ward (1864-1932) was a descendent on one side from the Dukes of Norfolk and on the other side from Anglican lawyers and writers. In 1887 Josephine married Wilfrid Ward, and spent her life in close companionship with the most active minds working in the late 19th century to restore to the Catholic Church in England the intellectual, sacramental and theological integrity it had once enjoyed before three hundred years of persecution. She wrote numerous novels, theological pamphlets, and articles for the Dublin Review and The Spectator.

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) -- Bestselling author Judith Krantz, whose novels of steamy sex and shameless materialism sold millions of copies in her heyday in the 1980s and '90s, has died at the age of 91, publicist John Tellem said Sunday.

Seven of Krantz's 10 novels were adapted for television as miniseries, with her husband Steve Krantz serving as executive producer for many of them. "Scruples" was produced over the years at least three times.

Krantz's son Tony Krantz, a TV executive, confirmed her death by natural causes on Sunday afternoon. He said he'd hoped to re-create the "Scruples" miniseries before her she died but it is still in the works.

"I always ask myself if what I'm writing will satisfy a reader who's in a plane that can't land because of fog, or who's recovering from an operation in a hospital or who has to escape to a more delightful world for whatever reason," Krantz said in 1990. "That is the test."

While her work was decidedly less than highbrow, Krantz made no apologies for the steamy novels with titles like "Princess Daisy," ''Mistral's Daughter," ''Lovers," ''I'll Take Manhattan" and "The Jewels of Tessa Kent."

"If you're going to write a good erotic scene, you have to go into details," Krantz told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. "I don't believe in thunder and lightning and fireworks exploding. I think people want to know what's happening."

So appealing were her sensational stories of high-powered heroines that each novel was reimagined for television as an episodic miniseries. Steve Krantz, a millionaire in his own right through such productions as the animated film "Fritz the Cat," helped translate his wife's work for TV.

The author was also famous for living a glamorous life that paralleled that of her characters. Her home in Los Angeles' exclusive Bel Air community featured a soundproof writing room flanked by an immaculately kept garden. In her closet were many of the same designer-label clothes the characters in her books wore.

The eldest of three children, Krantz was born Judith Bluma Tarcher in 1928 in New York City. Her father owned an advertising agency, and her mother worked as an attorney. Her brother, publisher Jeremy Tarcher, married the late ventriloquist Shari Lewis.

Growing up, Krantz was a precocious student at New York's exclusive Birch Wathen school, once describing herself as the youngest, smartest and shortest girl in her class. After skipping two grades, she enrolled at Wellesley College at age 16.

She was also by her own account an indifferent college student. She said she only enrolled at Wellesley "to date, read and graduate" and claimed to have set a record for her dorm by once dating 13 different men on 13 consecutive evenings.

"I got only one A-plus, and that was in English 101," she told The Boston Globe in 1982. "I had a B-minus average in English, my major, and made C's and C-minuses in everything else. But I didn't come here to get good marks."

"Just in time for my 50th birthday, I discovered that I could write fiction. My husband had urged me to try fiction for 15 years before I did," she was quoted in a profile on Wellesley's website in 2001. "I believed that if I couldn't write 'literature,' I shouldn't write at all."

Well, let me just say that I totally get now why my mom let me read her Danielle Steel books, and not Judith Krantz! Danielle Steel's sex scenes were few and they were discreet, but the first sex scene here comes on page 36 and features a fairly descriptive blow job. So right away, the readers know they're in for something . . . special. Krantz's descriptions are hilarious--I especially liked that Billy has "hair so brown it looked like black licked by moonlight."

This is aspirational fiction at its finest--it's mostly all about sex and fashion, and what you can do with lots and lots and lots of money. There's crazy name-dropping of brands and celebrities starting from page 1 (and even though this book was written in the very late 70s, many of those names are still dropped today).

Speaking of names: Billy, Spider, Valentine, Muffie . . . I don't even remember who Muffie was, I just wrote her name down (and actually, I went to private school with a girl called Muffy, so Krantz is really nailing this ethos).

I do like the structure of the book--how it flashes back and forth in time--so at the beginning we know there's this rich lady with an awesome store and an Oscar on the line, and then it tells us how she got there. (Though the scenes with the Oscar nominations late in the book are some of the silliest things I've ever read.)

One thing I very much didn't like about this book is how it's presented as like, romantic, to look 5 1/2 pounds every week, and that being "comfortably full" is a bad thing. That is an atrocious message to be sending to younger readers (and frankly, to grown-up ones too). I did like Billy coming into her own in France, but the way it happened kind of pissed me off.

And everyone falling in love in a day is kind of silly too--except Spider and Valentine, and that somehow managed to feel silly too, even though Krantz did sort of build up to it.

But the high praise for Jewish men amused the hell out of me, as did the International Network of Lesbians, which sounds like a great kind of conspiracy.

But mainly this book is about sex and fashion, and the sex scenes were CRAZY. Dude, homosexual encounters in bathrooms? References to glory holes?? Was that common in the 70s? I was pretty surprised to see that in a book!

What were your favorite sex scenes? I kind of like the one with the male nurse (and then the dr's pleased reaction that Billy was glowing and must be getting some!). What name-drop was your favorite? Do you love the glamourous world of these fashionistas? I must admit that the end made me want to know what would happen next! Where can they possibly go from here?

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