Ismail Merchant

Ismail Merchant and James Ivory made their approach to RPJ (whose novel The Householder they wished to film) through a telephone call from a strange woman pretending to be her mother-in-law.

She lived on terms of close friendship with Ivory and with Merchant (who died in May 2005), but also with a social circle of German expatriates, most of them refugees.

The film did well at the box-office, received enthusiastic reviews, and won three Academy Awards (including one for best screen adaptation). It received wide coverage, including a piece in People magazine, which was...

RPJ moved from India to live in New York's East 50s; her film partners Ismail Merchant and James Ivory shared the apartment right below hers.

After this RPJ 's output of screenplays for Merchant-Ivory Productions was steadily maintained. She collaborated with James Ivory in the fairy-tale-style The Guru, 1969, and the intense and atmospheric Bombay Talkie, 1970. Her...

Notable among RPJ 's television scripts was the four-part London Weekend Television series adapted from Paul Scott 's The Raj Quartet in 1978; it was shown both on the wide screen and on tv, entitled...

It was directed by James Ivory , who co-wrote the screenplay with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala .The producers were Ismail Merchant and Jean Pierre Mahot , and it was distributed by New World Pictures . It...