In Remembrance: Marjorie Kellogg

     Marjorie Kellogg, the novelist who adapted her 1968 novel Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon for the 1970 film version directed by Otto Preminger, has passed away on December 19, 2005 in Santa Barbara. She was 83.

     Born in Santa Barbara, California, Kellogg started her career as a copywriter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Following World War II, she worked as a European correspondent for Salute magazine. She eventually returned to the United States to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in social work from Smith College in Northampton College.

     Although Kellogg was working as social worker in New York City from the mid 1950s into the 1970s, she continued to write fiction, including the play “Rain In The Morning” for the anthology television series Matinee Theatre in 1957.

     Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon was Kellogg’s first novel, for which she drawn on her social work background to tell the story of three disabled people who form their own family unit. The film version starred Liza Minnelli and Ken Howard.

     Kellogg quit social work in the mid-1970s to concentrate on writing full time. In addition to scripting additional dialogue for the 1975 film Rosebud, Kellogg also wrote the screenplay adaptation of Sylvia Plath’s classic novel The Bell Jar in 1979.