Merla-Zellerbach-biography

Merla Zellerbach - author

Novels	2011-12 - LOVE TO DIE FOR, Firefall Editions (hardcover) 2010 - THE MISSING MOTHER, Firefall Editions (hardcover) Excellent Publishers Weekly Review 2009 - MYSTERY OF THE MERMAID, Firefall Editions (hardcover) 2009 - SECRETS IN TIME, Firefall Editions (hardcover & paperback) 1990 - RITTENHOUSE SQUARE, Random House (hardcover), Doubleday Book Club, NY Times Recommended Reading List 1989 - SUGAR, novel, Ballantine 1987 - LOVE THE GIVER, novel, Ballantine 1987 - CAVETT MANOR, novel, Ballantine 1986 - THE WILDES OF NOB HILL, novel, Ballantine 1961 - LOVE IN A DARK HOUSE; novel, Doubleday
Self-Help Medical	1996 - THE ALLERGY SOURCEBOOK (TAS), Lowell House (Division of McGraw Hill) 1998 - TAS, 2nd Edition 2000 - TAS, 3rd Edition 1984 - DETOX; Tarcher/Houghton-Mifflin (w/Phyllis Saifer, MD) 1983 - THE TYPE 1/TYPE 2 ALLERGY RELIEF PROGRAM; Tarcher/Houghton-Mifflin (w/Alan Levin, MD)
Other	1991 - THE STANFORD CENTURY; contributing author
Articles	Cosmopolitan, Travel & Leisure, Reader’s Digest, Prevention, Women’s World, This Week, Saturday Evening Post, and others 1989- 99; Cover stories: SF Focus, Gentry, NHG, Where Magazine 1985- 91; Featured articles (8) in Town & Country
Positions	2007 - present; Editor Emerita and staff writer for NHG 1995 - 2007; Editor, Nob Hill Gazette (NHG) 1975-93; Enrichment Lecturer and writing instructor on cruise ships 1965-70; Regular panelist ABC-TV’s OH MY WORD, w/June Lockhart 1962 - 1985; Featured columnist, MY FAIR CITY, S.F. Chronicle
Awards	2007 - Mayor Gavin Newsom Proclamation of Merla Zellerbach Day, October 1 2000 - California State Assembly Certificate of Recognition 2000 - US Senate Certificate of Commendation 2000 - now: Listed (Marquis) Who’s Who In America; Who’s Who In Entertainment 1999 - New York Times rave review for Rittenhouse Square 1999 - Wellness.Books.com Reviewer’s Choice Award (The Allergy Sourcebook) 1996 - Governor Pete Wilson commendation award 1994 - Where Magazine International Achievement Award for Best Article Writing 1983 - Mayor Dianne Feinstein Proclamation of Merla Zellerbach Day, November 1
Community	Queen of SF Mardi Gras, chair Beaux Arts Ball, founder SF Sponsors, The Singles Organization; volunteer at Planned Parenthood, The American Friends Service Committee, The Red Cross; trustee Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, currently on board of Compassion & Choices
Education	Grant grammar school, Lowell High School (Student body VP); Stanford
Interview	(published in RAVE REVIEWS - updated) As a psychology major at Stanford University, native San Franciscan Merla Zellerbach had only two ambitions: to get an education, and to get married. She achieved both, and during her years as a young, socially-prominent matron, became active in many civic and cultural organizations. Her interest in social problems led her to write her first book: a best-selling Doubleday novel set in a mental hospital. The book and several humorous articles caught the eye of the editor of the SF Chronicle, who hired her to write a feature column. “My Fair City” lasted 23 years, and ended when she decided to sign a four-book contract with Ballantine and write a series of articles for Town & Country magazine. In addition to newspaper work, Merla starred for five years as co-panelist with June Lockhart on the ABC-TV game show, “Oh, My Word.” She also co-authored two self-help books with doctors, THE TYPE 1/TYPE 2 ALLERGY RELIEF PROGRAM, and DETOX. She has since written THE WILDES OF NOB HILL, LOVE THE GIVER, CAVETT MANOR and SUGAR for Ballantine. In February, 1990, Random House published her eighth book, RITTENHOUSE SQUARE - a cabbage-to-caviar tale of a feisty heroine who defies Old Guard Philadelphians to build a high-rise empire of glitz and glamour. The book won a rave review in the New York Times and prompted Abigail (Dear Abby) Van Buren to write: “It’s a sexy, swift-moving page-turner that has bestseller written all over it. Trust me.” Merla’s current novel, SECRETS IN TIME, has just been released and she is currently awaiting publication of a new novel – a romance/mystery that takes place aboard a cruise ship.
Articles about	Merla Zellerbach's Career In High Society San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, November 23, 2008 By Carolyne Zinko, Chronicle Staff Writer Merla Zellerbach has seen a lot of human behavior - especially the sort conducted in elite circles. But in the attempt to live graciously, or at least continue being invited to parties and charitable events, the longtime Chronicle columnist and former Nob Hill Gazette editor hasn't printed everything that she's heard over the years, whether it involved suicides or kleptomaniacs, brides left at the altar or babies of unknown paternity. That's not to say the writer has never dished the dirt. Zellerbach does give life to white-glove secrets, but not with searing tell-all memoirs. Her method is more ladylike: fiction novels with thinly veiled real-life characters. Her latest book, "Secrets in Time," (Firefall Editions, 288 pages), tells the story of a decades-old romance involving members of an influential newspaper family with a hush-hush history. Along the way, Zellerbach includes real-life characters with composites of others. Part of the fun is trying to determine whom she's referring to when she changes the names. As the real-life daughter of a rabbi who spoke out against racial bigotry, Zellerbach sprinkles a bit of tension throughout the book with a running thread about anti-Semitism in the predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant San Francisco society of the 1940s, the period in which the book is set. Zellerbach has no hard feelings or bad blood with anyone in town, nor is the book likely to create any. It's a fast and fun read meant for a rainy day, as a pre-bedtime literary snack or for a beach vacation. The reason she set the story in high society is the same reason she enjoyed editing stories about society for years. "People like to read about the rich and famous," Zellerbach explained. "They can dream and have fantasies." She knows there are those who think class-conscious high society doesn't matter in the ostensibly egalitarian modern-day world. But society matters, she said, for reasons of anthropology. "People are still snobby. This is going to get me in trouble, but they still like to feel elite. It will always be," said Zellerbach, a petite woman who looks fragile but has strong convictions. "Even monkeys and orangutans have a pecking order. People want to feel special." Zellerbach gets her name and owes her social standing in part to her first husband, Stephen Zellerbach of the Zellerbach Paper Co., later Crown-Zellerbach Corporation. It is the family for which UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall is named. She was raised Merla Burstein, the daughter of Rabbi Elliot Burstein of Congregation Beth Israel (now Beth Israel Judea) in San Francisco. Her mother, Lottie, helped out at the temple and found a creative outlet by performing dramatic readings of plays. Her late sister, Devera Kettner, was an actress (under the screen name Debby Burton). She also has a brother, Dr. Sandor Burstein, of San Francisco. Zellerbach majored in psychology at Stanford University. She married Stephen at age 19, and they had one child, a son named Gary. Like many marriages, it wasn't without problems. To sort them out, Zellerbach began taking walks with a next-door neighbor, a psychiatrist. Afterward, she would go home and type up her newfound revelations in story format. Her heroine was named Diane. Seated near an editor for Doubleday Books at a charity luncheon, Zellerbach explained she wasn’t a writer, but the editor encouraged her to send samples of her work. "He agreed I wasn't a writer,” she laughs, “but he advised me to pick a subject, research it, and then write. So I spent time – not as a patient! – at several mental hospitals, wrote a book and amazingly, Doubleday published it." The novel, "Love in a Dark House," came out in 1962. Faint praise from Herb Caen Chronicle editor Scott Newhall spotted an article she’d written, and asked if she’d like to write a column for The Chronicle. When Newhall asked Merla’s friend and columnist Herb Caen if she could write, his response was cringe-worthy: "I don't know," Zellerbach recalls him saying, "but she's pretty." She remembers that Chronicle book reviewer Bill Hogan didn't like her first novel. "He panned it and said I'd never have been published if my name had not been Zellerbach," she said. "That hurt. He may have been right - I was a social butterfly." He may also have been wrong. The paper hired her, and her column, My Fair City, was good enough to run for 23 years, from 1962 to 1985. The columns were light and bright, focused on a single subject and truths about human nature. In the 1960s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a double mastectomy. A male news editor, she said, told her it was a good thing it had happened after she'd gotten married. "It was as if I were damaged goods and nobody would want me anymore," she recalls. She once tried to write about environmental issues, and another time, about animal rights, only to be told that the paper didn't want those types of stories. "Too lefty," she now thinks. If Zellerbach somehow irked her male editors, she has always been considered a gem to those around her. Former Chronicle society columnist Grace Prien, who worked at the paper in the 1960s, called her "earthy and proper, with a bit of an ethereal quality.” “It wasn't easy for women to break into journalism back then, and Zellerbach, at the time, was one of only two women in the newsroom, along with the ‘formidable’ Carolyn Anspacher,” Prien said. "We were regarded as special little animals by the brass," Prien recalled. "They kind of tolerated us but thought we behaved differently. Merla has always had respect for people and they return it to her. She's also had ample opportunity to throw her weight around, and she never has." Longtime friend and philanthropist Roselyne "Cissie" Swig, whose late husband was chairman of the Fairmont Hotel Management Co., said Zellerbach has spent years doing good works for friends and the community, often in understated ways. "Whatever she's done, she's done it with integrity and shown it was worthwhile." Lois Lehrman, publisher of the Nob Hill Gazette, called Zellerbach "the consummate lady" and said it was invaluable to have someone around who knows San Francisco "backwards and forwards, from the inside out." Zellerbach and her first husband divorced amicably after 18 years. Her second husband was veteran TV and radio broadcaster Fred Goerner, who wrote the book "The Search for Amelia Earhart" in 1966. They were married 26 years; he died of cancer in 1994. For 10 years she has been married to Lee Munson, a former executive at Mobil Latin America and a former corporate treasurer at Crown Zellerbach. Zellerbach's life has been as action-packed as that of her heroines. She has written novels and nonfiction books on health issues, including "The Allergy Sourcebook" and "Detox." In the late 1960s, she appeared on a local ABC game show moderated by Jim Lange called "Oh My Word," in which panelists (Zellerbach, actress June Lockhart, Scott Beach and Paul Speegle) offered definitions of obscure words to a contestant, who had to guess the right meaning to win. She left The Chronicle in 1985, and a decade later joined the Nob Hill Gazette as editor, staying until 2007. Zellerbach may run in society circles, but she doesn't flaunt it. She hosts parties for causes ranging from the San Francisco Lyric Opera to Compassion and Choices, a death with dignity group. The word socialite is considered derogatory in some circles, she explained, for the reason that some are "spoiled, flighty rich people." Some donate just to see their names listed in a symphony, opera or ballet program in groups according to how much money they give. On the other hand, notes Zellerbach, ever diplomatic, "Heck, it works. I don't think all people give for that reason, but some do. And the money goes to great causes. Pay-for-prestige is a big reason society will continue to exist." And with it, fodder for her next book. Writing Rittenhouse Square (The Philadelphia Inquirer) MZ didn’t start out to be a writer. She majored in psychology at Stanford University and didn’t think much beyond marriage and having a family. In 1962, a local magazine article she wrote happened to catch the eye of the Chronicle editor and began her 23-year career with the newspaper. “I learned journalism the hard way - by making mistakes and falling on my face,” she says. “I also wrote four novels - they’re still sitting in the basement - before I got one published.” “When I left the Chron to concentrate on novels,” she says, “some of my friends said: Aren’t you glad to be writing fiction? Now you don’t have to worry about accuracy. Ironically, I find myself doing twice the research. Today’s readers want to be educated as well as entertained, and I’ve learned that if you’re describing a hospital, museum, real estate office, whatever, you’d better have every detail credible.” Another problem was the sex scenes. “My editor didn’t think they were lusty enough and kept penciling changes in the margins. One line I remember, ‘the soft curve of her upturned breasts’ became ‘The pendulous sway of her colossal bosom.’ I ended up writing some fairly steamy dialogue. If I’d been caught reading scenes like that as a young woman, my parents would’ve been horrified.” The ending is happy and upbeat, for as Zellerbach says, “I don’t believe in depressing people. I write to be fun, to tell a good story, to entertain, and to leave the reader feeling positive.” The Random House editors, she recalls, were tough on her. “They made me go through the Philadelphia phone book and make sure none of my characters had names of real people. They also made me tone down two main characters, one based on the late Malcolm Forbes & the other on Philly’s ex-mayor Frank Rizzo. One doesn’t generally think of those two men as being publicity-shy, but the lawyers insisted they were entitled to their privacy. It reminded me of the local grande dame who felt HER privacy had been invaded when I wrote a tongue-in-cheeky piece about the debutante ball. She happened to be standing near me at a party a few nights later when I said to my husband, “I’m having stomach pains. I think we better go home.” The dowager looked me up and down, and snapped, “Something you wrote, no doubt.”
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