In the event it was the interest of three female Hollywood producers that persuaded a publisher to take a chance.The book sold in its millions and the 1996 film was also a massive success. Her second novel, Flavor of the Month (1993), was a satire on the film world; Fashionably Late (1994) was her take on fashion; and with Bestseller (1996) she sharpened her pen for an attack on publishers. Other novels included Marrying Mom (1996), The Switch (1998), Young Wives (2000) and Uptown Girl (2003). She had also completed Casting On by the time of her death.Goldsmith earned some $4.5m (and counting) from her novels and was able to buy property in Manhattan and the Hamptons in her own right. She said that she would never marry again, although she regretted that it was too late for her to have children.
And in the book, the three “first wives” who seek revenge on their wealthy husbands go for the wallet rather than the jugular.The First Wives Club wasn’t an easy sell. The $300,000 settlement she received was entirely swallowed up by lawyers’ fees. “I hate divorce lawyers and judges more than I ever did my ex,” she said later, before amending her statement: “No, that’s not right. I hate them all, and I want them dead.”That murderous impulse was, however, disguised when it came to writing The First Wives Club.
She decided that her best revenge on her ex-husband would be to have a best-seller partly inspired by her experiences – further inspiration had come from an article in Fortune magazine about rich, old businessmen and their trophy wives. She had been living in New York but after her divorce she moved to London for three years.Her divorce was, she once remarked, “extremely nasty”. First it dragged on and on, then her husband came away with all the property. She wanted to be a writer from an early age but after university embarked on a career as a management consultant on Wall Street.
She was so successful she was one of the first women to be made a partner in the firm Booz Allen Hamilton.Goldfield married a businessman, Paul Smith, and decided to give up her career to write children’s books But after five years her marriage fell messily apart. They had lived well during the marriage, with an apartment in Manhattan and a beach house in the Hamptons Now she was homeless and jobless. She changed her name to Justine Olivia Rendal and created a pen name, Olivia Goldsmith. She grew up in Dumont, New Jersey, then went to New York University. According to her sister Barbara, Randy was an avid reader with a startling memory; she could quote whole sections of books she had read. We’re responsible for the home, and we have to have thin thighs. Nobody can do it.She was born Randy Goldfield in New York City in 1949 Her father was a civil servant, her mother a teacher She had two sisters.
