Scarlett’s Falling Morningstar
Last fall, actress Scarlett Johansson was named to this paper’s annual list of the American Jewish world’s top 50 movers and shakers. Not only had the voluptuous starlet — who has a Danish father and a Jewish mother — apparently cured Woody Allen of his shiksa fetish, but she was slated to play one of the iconic Jewesses of modern American literature, the title character in Herman Wouk’s 1955 novel “Marjorie Morningstar,” in an upcoming film adaptation.
Now, alas, The Shmooze hears that Johansson as Marjorie was too good to be true.
Johansson shared the bad news with The Shmooze at a May 3 Oxfam benefit in New York City at the Louis Vuitton store on Fifth Avenue.
“It was one of those heartbreak projects that you had to let go,” she said. “Sometimes when you have a book like that, there are a lot of rights to it, and everyone’s been involved for such a long time. It was a ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ type of thing.”
According to a 2004 article in MovieMaker magazine, Johansson first became interested in the character of Marjorie Morningstar when her mother gave her a copy of the eponymous book for her 17th birthday. “I read it and thought, ‘Oh my god, this is me,’” she said.
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