Rose Leiman Goldemberg, the playwright and Emmy-nominated TV writer who was behind the telefilms The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett, and Stone Pillow, starring Lucille Ball, died Monday in Cape May, New Jersey, a publicist announced. She was 97.
The Staten Island native also penned Letters Home, a 1980 play about famed poet Sylvia Plath that has been translated and produced all over the world and was filmed for television in 1986.
Her telefilm résumé included 1976’s The Land of Hope; 1980’s Mother and Daughter: The Loving War, starring Tuesday Weld and Frances Sternhagen; 1982’s Born Beautiful, starring Erin Gray and Polly Bergen; 1985’s Florence Nightingale, starring Jaclyn Smith, and The Booth, starring Teri Garr; and 1989’s Dark Holiday, starring Lee Remick.
Goldemberg adapted The Burning Bed, which aired in October 1984 on NBC, from the 1980 book written by battered housewife Francine Hughes, who wound up on trial for the murder of her abusive ex-husband, “Mickey” Hughes.
Named the No. 7 TV drama of all time by critic Matt Zoller Seitz, The Burning Bed sparked public discussion about women’s abuse. And as Francine, former Charlie’s Angels star Fawcett demonstrated that she could be a serious drama actress.
The telefilm earned Goldemberg two Emmy nominations (she also served as co-producer) and won the WGA award for best dramatic adaptation.
In the 1985 CBS telefilm Stone Pillow, Ball shed her comedic roots to star as an elderly homeless woman living on the streets of New York.
Born on May 17, 1928, in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island, Goldemberg began writing stories at age 5 and entered Brooklyn College in 1944 at age 16. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she earned her master’s from Ohio State University.
Upon graduation, Goldemberg started working at the new TV Guide magazine, reviewing scripts and writing plot summaries. Deciding to become a screenwriter, she studied at the American Theatre Wing and Columbia University and learned from the likes of Lee Strasberg and Ira Cirker.
Her screenwriting career began with Sunday morning religious dramas on CBS.
Her play Gandhiji was chosen for the O’Neill Conference in 1970, when she was a mother and full-time teacher. It premiered in 1977 at the Back Alley in Washington and received a Robbie Award.
The Land of Hope was a pilot for a CBS series about the immigration experience in America and was set in New York’s Lower East Side during the early 20th century.
Letters Home premiered as part of the Women’s Project at New York’s American Place Theatre in 1979 and dramatized the correspondence between Plath and her mother. It was later produced in London, Montreal, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles and other cities and was directed as a 1986 telefilm by Chantal Akerman.
Sophie, about singer-actress Sophie Tucker, was first produced at the Jewish Repertory Theater in 1987 and starred Judith Cohen. Another musical, Picon Pie, starring Barbara Minkus as actress Molly Picon, bowed at the Santa Monica Playhouse in 2002 before playing off-Broadway in 2005.
Her work has been archived in the New York Public Library for Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Goldemberg also taught English and Theater at City College in New York, at Valley College in L.A. and at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey. She wrote several books, poems, articles and short stories as well.
Survivors include her son, Leiman, nieces Kathy and Debbie and nephews David and Michael. She was married to computer designer Raymond Schiller from 1949-68 and to cosmetic chemist Robert Goldemberg from 1969-89.