Laura Zametkin Hobson (June 19, 1900 – February 28, 1986) was an American writer, best known for her novels Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and Consenting Adult (1975).
[note 2] After graduating from Cornell University in 1921, Laura Zametkin held various jobs, including stints as an advertising copywriter and as a reporter for the New York Post.
In 1932, Hobson's fiction appeared in print for the first time, when The New Yorker published "The Perfect Man" ("a sketch more than a story")[2] under the by-line "Laura Mount.
This story of a magazine writer who decides to research antisemitism by posing as a Jew was a worldwide success, translated into thirteen languages.
[5] The genesis of the novel was an article Hobson had read in the February 14, 1944 issue of Time magazine, which reported that John E. Rankin, a Democratic congressman from Mississippi, while addressing the House of Representatives, had referred to newspaper columnist Walter Winchell as "the little kike."
Directed by Elia Kazan for 20th Century Fox, from a screenplay by Moss Hart, the movie starred Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, John Garfield, and a young Dean Stockwell.
The Tenth Month, the autobiographical story of a divorced woman of forty who discovers she is pregnant, was published in 1971, and filmed for television in 1979 with Carol Burnett.
It was followed by the neglected Over and Above (1979), which explored concepts of Jewish identity in the story of three generations of women;[14] and her final novel, Untold Millions (1982), the tale of a young advertising copywriter and the feckless man she loves.
[16] On July 23, 1930, Laura Zametkin married Thayer Hobson, who in 1931 became president of the William Morrow and Company publishing house.
Four years later, finding herself unexpectedly pregnant, she decided to have the baby in secrecy, unwilling to have Michael feel stigmatized as her only adopted child.
[17] Note: Both books by "Peter Field" were Westerns, written in collaboration with then-husband Thayer Hobson and published by William Morrow.