It's the birthday of columnist Doris Lilly (books by this author), born in South Pasadena, California (1926). She wrote society columns for the New York Post and the New York Daily Mirror, writing mostly about celebrities. She once admitted that her columns were silly and that the people she wrote about were shallow, but she said, "They're pleasant and they smell good and they eat well and drink good wines, and that's all right." Her first book was How to Marry a Millionaire (1951), which was made into a movie starring Marilyn Monroe. She wrote a later version called How to Marry a Billionaire (1984). She said: "A million dollars isn't much money these days. You can't even get a decent house for that." She also wrote for Ladies' Home Journal, Avenue, McCall's, and Cosmopolitan, and she wrote film scripts. Lilly never married, but she did date Ronald Reagan for about three years, when he was between marriages to Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis. Lilly is believed to be the one of the women who served as inspiration for Holly Golighty, the character in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2012/12/26
