Sandra Myers
‘Beloved Infidel’ from Homelessness to Hollywood: The Story of Sheilah Graham
Summary
Born to impoverished Ukrainian immigrant parents, Lily Shiel was raised in an orphanage from a young age. She later rose to prominence as Sheilah Graham, the famous American gossip columnist and television personality.
Sandra Myers
Sandra Myers did her MA in Jewish history at UCL and was a director of the LJCC (London Jewish Cultural Centre) from its inception. She has worked for over 20 years with the Citizens Advice Bureau.
She was syndicated, first of all, to one of the New York newspapers who recognized that she had great ability, and when she went out to Hollywood, she worked for them as well for the same organization. They gave her a column to write there.
I think they did, I think that each of them anglicized their names. One I understood, one of her brothers, had a very successful fashion business, and I don’t know about the others, but from just reading clips, I think they stayed pretty much within the community. They weren’t put in an orphanage, they weren’t put in the Norwood Home, they lived with the mother. And they were much older, of course, when their mother died. Her son, Robert, he was a successful journalist, a one-hit-wonder as far as I understand, and then he went to live as a recluse somewhere in the hills behind California.
That’s a terrific question because no one seems to know. I’ve looked, and absolutely no one seems to know whether she was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Palm Beach, I doubt it very much. I couldn’t say for sure, honestly I don’t know.