Susan Berman facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Susan Berman
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| Born | Susan Jane Berman May 18, 1945 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | December 23, 2000 (aged 55) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Home of Peace Cemetery |
| Occupation | Journalist, author |
| Language | English |
| Education | University of California, Los Angeles (B.A.) University of California, Berkeley (M.A.) |
| Genre | Fiction, nonfiction |
| Subject | American Mafia, Las Vegas |
| Notable works | Easy Street |
| Spouse | Christopher ("Mister") Margulies (divorced) |
| Relatives | Davie Berman (father) |
Susan Jane Berman (May 18, 1945 – December 23, 2000) was an American journalist and author.
Early life
Susan Berman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1945, the only child of Betty Ewald and David "Davie" Berman.
Berman grew up in Las Vegas and, later, in Hollywood, California, where high school classmates and friends at the Chadwick School included Jann Wenner and Liza Minnelli. Berman received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she met American real estate heir Robert Durst. In 1969, she graduated with a Master of Arts in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley.
Career
Berman was a novelist and author of two memoirs, along with a 1971 college guidebook, The Underground Guide to the College of Your Choice. Her first memoir, Easy Street, detailed her life as a mobster's daughter. While representing her in the 1970s, the William Morris Agency talked with several Hollywood producers interested in adapting the book into a screenplay. The movie rights were ultimately sold for $350,000, but no film project ever materialized. For a time, Berman attempted to finance a musical based on the Dreyfus affair, in which Durst declined to invest.
In San Francisco, Berman wrote for media outlets including the San Francisco Examiner, Francis Ford Coppola's City Magazine, the Westinghouse Evening Show on KPIX-TV, and the People show on CBS. She was a contributing writer for magazines such as New York, Cosmopolitan and Family Circle. She also wrote Driver, Give a Soldier a Lift! and Lady Las Vegas, accompanying the 1996 release of an A&E documentary, for which she was a co-writer and nominated for a Writers Guild of America award.
At the time of her death, Berman was working on a project for Showtime with attorney Kevin Norte. Entitled Sin City, it was being planned as Showtime's answer to the HBO hit The Sopranos.
Personal life
Berman lived just off the Sunset Strip on Alta Loma Road in West Hollywood for several years prior to her final residence in Benedict Canyon, a suburb of Los Angeles. Her manager, Nyle Brenner, later told the Los Angeles Times that "many details of Ms. Berman's personal life are unclear" and added "she had been married once in the 1980s, and later helped rear the two children of a boyfriend." Berman was married to Christopher "Mister" Margulies, in June 1984 at the Hotel Bel-Air.
Books
Nonfiction
- The Underground Guide to the College of Your Choice (Signet, 1971), ISBN: 0451078373
- Easy Street: The True Story of a Mob Family (The Dial Press, 1981), ISBN: 978-0385271851
- Lady Las Vegas: The Inside Story Behind America's Neon Oasis (TV Books, 1996), ISBN: 978-1575000206
Fiction
- Driver, Give a Soldier a Lift (Putnam, 1976), ISBN: 978-0399117046
- Fly Away Home (Avon Books, 1996), ISBN: 978-0380781799
- Spiderweb (Avon Books, 1997), ISBN: 978-0380781805
In popular culture
In the 2010 film All Good Things, the character Deborah Lehrman, portrayed by Lily Rabe, is inspired by Susan Berman.
The story of Susan Berman's suspicious death was covered by a CBS News Productions documentary series 48 Hours, Season 29, Episode 19, "Murder 90210", release date 30 January 2016 (USA).
The case was the basis for the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "Maledictus."
