Roberta Leigh
| Roberta Leigh | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rita Shulman 22 December 1926 London, United Kingdom |
| Died | 19 December 2014 (aged 87) London, England |
| Pen name | Roberta Leigh, Rachel Lindsay, Janey Scott, Rozella Lake |
| Occupation | Writer, filmmaker, composer, painter |
| Education | St Mary's Convent, Rhyl, Wales |
| Period | 1950–2013 |
| Genre | Romantic novels, children's stories, science fiction, romantic murder mysteries |
| Spouse | Michael Lewin (m. 1948; d. 1981) |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| www |
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Roberta Leigh was an assumed name for Rita Lewin (née Shulman) (22 December 1926 – 19 December 2014) was a British author, artist, composer and television producer. She wrote romance fiction and children's stories under the pseudonyms Roberta Leigh, Rachel Lindsay, Janey Scott and Rozella Lake.
She published her first novel in 1950 and was still actively working on new titles until a year before her death. In addition, she created the children's puppet television series Sara and Hoppity, Torchy the Battery Boy, Wonder Boy and Tiger, Send for Dithers and Space Patrol (the last of which she also wrote and produced).
Best known as Roberta Leigh, she was born Rita Shulman in London to sometimes-poor Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia. In 1948, she married Michael Lewin, with whom she had one son, and was widowed in 1981. She died age 87 on 19 December 2014.
Leigh wrote her first romantic fiction at age 14, while still a schoolgirl at St Mary’s convent in Rhyl. She published a romance in 1950 as Roberta Leigh, the first of over 160 novels. She also published children's books and romances under the pseudonyms Janey Scott, Rachel Lindsay and Rozella Lake. Following the death of her husband, she stopped writing romance novels, but continued to produce serious fiction and children's books while developing various television and film projects. She made a total of 275 cinematic works, becoming the first woman producer in Britain to have her own film company.
She created eight puppet TV series, including The Adventures Of Twizzle (1957), Torchy the Battery Boy (1958), Sara and Hoppity (1962), Wonder Boy and Tiger, Send for Dithers, and Space Patrol (1962), - syndicated around the globe and achieving the highest ratings of any children’s show up to that time - which chronicled the year 2100 adventures of Captain Larry Dart of the spaceship Galasphere 347. This was followed by Paul Starr (1964) and a live-action colour space adventure series, The Solarnauts (1967). For these two later series, however, only the pilot episodes were filmed.
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