Frances Spatz Leighton

Frances Spatz Leighton (born Frances Ornstein; September 4, 1919 – April 6, 2007) was an American author, ghostwriter, and journalist. She ghostwrote several memoirs and accounts of Washington D. C. life, writing over 30 books, including My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House and My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy (1969). She was born in Ohio and attended Ohio State University, but did not graduate. Leighton soon moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a journalist for several publications, including The American Weekly. She ghostwrote her first memoir in 1957, of a chef for the President of the United States.

Biography Early life Frances Ornstein was born on a dairy farm in Geauga County, Ohio, on September 4, 1919. She had one sister, Rose, who died at age 27, and one brother, Jack, who became a professor of modern languages and linguistics at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Ornstein went to the local Thompson High School, graduating in 1937. Ornstein attended Ohio State University for several years but dropped out shortly before her graduation. While at Ohio State, she was a member of the Verse Writer's Guild of Ohio, hosted a show on the college's radio station and wrote poetry. At the time her goal in life was "to conduct a newspaper, poetry and philosophy column." After dropping out, Ornstein moved to Washington, D.C.

Career In Washington, Leighton found initial employment writing as a freelancer for the Metro Sunday Group and other publications. She also worked as a contributing editor to Family Weekly and Washington editor of This Week. Her articles covered topics such as a woman who claimed to have "prayed herself thin", the keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and a student at Georgetown University who had been a freshman for twelve years.

The first book she ghostwrote was published in 1957, after The American Weekly gave her an assignment to write a profile of François Rsavy, Dwight D. Eisenhower's chef. Leighton came up with White House Chef which was described as "chatty and surprisingly candid" and selected for preservation in an underground vault by the Library of Congress. In 1959 she collaborated with Jane Barkley, the wife of Alben W. Barkley, to write White House Menus and Recipes. By 1969 Leighton had been involved in ghostwriting 16 books. The book was published the following year. She co-wrote with John Szostak In The Footsteps of John Paul II (1980), June Allyson's eponymous memoir in 1982 and a biography of Nancy Reagan, The Search for the Real Nancy Reagan, in 1987. "The 'Ghost' of Washington", Her will established a trust to divide money between the town of Thompson and the Ledgemont School District to improve the local library. Leighton worked with Parks to write My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House (1961) about her experiences working at the White House and as a child while her mother was.

I Married a Psychiatrist In 1962 Citadel Press published I Married a Psychiatrist. Leighton told the press that the idea for the book came when she was walking her Border Collie, named "Tiger Lil" and walked by a neighbor who was a psychiatrist, Frank Caprio. She wrote the book from a story told by Louise Pfister, the wife of Caprio's wife. After meeting him, Leighton said that his psychiatric advice "changed my life". In 1965 Paramount Pictures announced that it was working on a $2 million movie adaptation of the book, to be directed by George Sidney. but plans for the film were shelved after Reynolds got into a fight with the producers.

My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy Mary Barelli Gallagher worked as the personal secretary for Jacqueline Kennedy from 1957 to 1964. She wrote a 700-page autobiographical memoir, initially not intending to publish it. When Gallagher decided that she wanted her stories to be published, she approached Leighton through the National Press Club. The two spent around six months revising the manuscript into a 396-page book that was published as My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy in 1969 to generally negative reviews. The New York Times called the book "a worm's-eye view of history commercially packaged by a backstairs ghost" and noted that Gallagher provided "the venom" and "details" to Leighton, who "blended them together with the precision of a hack." Through the process, Gallagher and Leighton became friends and would remain as such until Leighton's death.

Partial bibliography

, an original TV tie-in novel based on The Patty Duke Show