Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

We should know it as Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala, or possibly Merchant-Ivory-Prawer Jhabvala, though that latter is confusing and suggests a fourth member of the partnership. Still, from 1963 to 2003, the trio worked together, and it’s worth noting that James Ivory continued directing after the death of producer Ismail Merchant but not after hers. Granted James Ivory is also 97 years old, but he also had, shall we say, a closer relationship with Merchant in certain very specific ways. It seems likely that he spent so many years working on scripts she’d written—with an exception we’ll get to—that he didn’t want to get used to anyone else’s writing style.

Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne in 1927, and you don’t have to know a lot of European history to know that it was about to be a bad time for the granddaughter of the cantor of the largest synagogue in Cologne. Her father, a lawyer, was accused of communist links. He was arrested then freed, and the family was among the last refugees to get out of Germany in 1939. Ten years later, her father would kill himself upon learning that forty members of his family were victims of the Holocaust. She attended Queen Mary College, London, getting an MA in English literature, before marrying Cyrus Jhabvala and moving with him to India.

There, she began writing novels. Her third novel, The Householder, came to the attention of Merchant and Ivory. They actually came to talk to her to ask her to write the screenplay for them; she initially pretended to be the housekeeper to avoid speaking to them. Somehow they convinced her, though, and that began their four-decade trinity. She continued writing novels, including Booker Prize-winning Heat and Dust, but she wrote no fewer than twenty-seven screenplays, not all Merchant-Ivory—including the one she and James Ivory cowrote after Ismail Merchant’s death.

Also an ABC Afterschool Special, admittedly with Ivory but without Merchant. About Shakespeare because of course; what else would you hire James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for? Also John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Lynn Redgrave. In case you didn’t believe me about how bonkers those shows could be. Even her episode of American Playhouse was directed by Ivory. Only Madame Sousatzka was written for a different director.

Meanwhile, there were a few Merchant-Ivory films not written by her, most notably Maurice. Which allegedly she wouldn’t write because the subject matter—a gay romance—made her uncomfortable. I haven’t read any of her books, but apparently there are people who are not thrilled about the Indian stories she, a European, was telling. She has been accused of colonial attitudes, and I don’t know enough on that subject to have an opinion. Still, minor controversies aside, she definitely deserves to be thought of in the same breath as her long-term partners. Not her fault her name isn’t part of the production company’s.