Novelist and book reviewer Rita Mae Brown told readers of The Washington Post in 1979 that Kilgallen had expressed much curiosity about Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, despite the prevalence of show business gossip in her newspaper column. The Kilgallen book was well received upon its publication in 1979, and appeared on The New York Times Best Seller List. In the 1970s and 1980s, she published biographies of the actress Tallulah Bankhead, the journalist and game-show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, and the cosmetics tycoon Estée Lauder. Israel's magazine-writing career continued into the 1970s. Her profile of Katharine Hepburn, whom Israel had visited in California shortly before the death of Spencer Tracy, ran in the November 1967 edition of Esquire magazine. Israel began a career as a freelance writer in the 1960s. She graduated from Midwood High School, and in 1961 from CUNY's Brooklyn College. Her parents were Jack and Sylvia Israel she also had a brother, Edward. Israel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish family. Her 2008 confessional autobiography Can You Ever Forgive Me? was adapted into the 2018 film of the same name starring Melissa McCarthy as Israel. Leonore Carol ' Lee' Israel (Decem– December 24, 2014) was an American author known for committing literary forgery.

Forgiveness a memoir