Books

With A Cast Of Thousands (1963)

Thanks For The Rubies, Now Please Pass The Moon (1972)

Bed/Time/Story (1974)

Perdido (1978)

Dr. Rocksinger and the Age of Longing (1982)

Follow Me Through Paris (1983)

Star Country (1998)

Past Forgetting (1999)

Falling in Love When you Thought You Were Through (2002)

Go Find Out (2021)

Come Home Canyon (2023)

Publications

The New York Times

The Washington Post

Chicago Tribune

Vanity Fair

Vogue

Cosmopolitan

Los Angeles Times

The Daily Telegraph

Huffington Post

JILL SCHARY ROBINSON was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of two artists. Her father was Oscar and Tony winner Dore Schary, head of MGM during the ‘40s and ‘50s, the only writer to ever run a film studio. Her mother, the painter M. Svet, studied at the Art Students League in New York.

As a copywriter for Foote Cone & Belding, Robinson trained with the legendary Helen Gurley Brown. During the ‘60s, she wrote on revolutionary women’s issues for Cosmopolitan and covered political trials for the Soho Weekly News. Her first memoir, With a Cast of Thousands, was a runaway hit. During the late fifties and sixties she also interviewed political and film personalities on KPFK and had a talk show on KLAC. 

After several difficult years, Robinson recovered her spirit, her passion for writing, and political expression. In 1972, Robinson won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her bold memoir, Bed/Time/Story, received rave reviews and was an International success Robinson received custody of her children, and wrote Perdido, published in 1978, which established Robinson as a serious novelist. She became a lively journalist, reviewing books, writing articles for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and American and French Vogue.

In 1980 Robinson married an Englishman, Stuart Shaw. In 1983, Mr. Shaw, who had been head of marketing for Proctor & Gamble, was asked to run the Royal Worchester-Spade Company’s marketing in London. They leased a house on Wimpole Street around the corner where Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning lived. She wrote a series of columns on being an American in Britain for London’s Daily Telegraph. Her Vanity Fair story on Roman Polanski was included in George Plimpton’s book The Best American Movie Writing for 1998.

In 1999, Vanity Fair described Robinson’s Past Forgetting as “the astounding chronicle of her journey to recover her memory.” Robinson and her husband also cruised the world, reading their play Falling In Love When You Thought You Were Through (adapted from their memoir, published in 2002).

Robinson was given a lifetime grant in 2005 to develop the non-profit Wimpole Street Writers program, which continues in London and Los Angeles, where she has run workshops for the Veteran’s Administration, working with Veteran’s with PTSD, encouraging them to release the stories they fear to tell. She also hosts workshops twice a week for all writers including playwrights and screenwriters. The only rule, “No pages, no dinner.”

“Nobody knows Hollywood like Jill Robinson…Robinson is the Whitman of Sunset Boulevard.” —John Lahr

“Jill Robinson has a knack for the beautifully constructed sentence.” — Dominick Dunne

“Her honesty, her humor, and her brilliant gift for individual sentences stopped this reader’s world.” —Ann Beattie

“Jill Robinson knows how to tell us terrible things in a funny tone of voice.” — John Leonard