In 1984, months after my article about Judy Blume appeared in the Oakland Tribune, the author phoned me.
An Oakland girl who was hospitalized with mental health problems had written a disturbing letter to Blume, and the author was determined to reach her. She sought my help in tracking down the most likely hospital. I suggested Gladman, now a mental health rehabilitation center. Gladman was correct, and Blume called back to thank me.
Blume is a mensch, which comes through in “Judy Blume Forever,” a new documentary about the 85-year-old Jewish author of 29 books for children and adults.
The 95-minute film, directed by Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Last week, the S.F.-based Jewish Film Institute previewed the film for members. The JFI, which runs the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, has a long relationship with the author. Blume appeared at Castro Theatre for the film fest’s 2012 screening of an adaptation of her novel “Tiger Eyes.”
Much of the focus of “Judy Blume Forever” is on the writer of beloved kids’ books such as “Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing” and “Superfudge” and the titillating adult novel “Wifey.” But the most moving moments are the interviews with Blume’s real-life pen pals, who share their letters and their stories.
“Judy was my last chance,” says Karen Chilstrom, who wrote to Blume about a brother who sexually abused her and died by suicide. “She saw a person who was hurting and didn’t give up on me.”
When kids felt alone, Blume was often there. When the parents of longtime pen pal Lorrie Kim were in Korea and couldn’t attend her graduation from Bryn Mawr College, Kim invited Blume, who attended with husband George Cooper.
Kim first wrote to Blume when she was 9 after reading “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” The controversial 1970 middle-grade novel about a teen with a Jewish father and a Christian mother has been adapted into a film that opens in theaters on Friday.
“I found that Margaret’s problems were very like my own, for my mother is Buddhist and my father Christian,” says Kim, now 54, reading from her letter. “I did not even know what menstruation was until I read your books.”
In those books and letters, Blume not only addressed periods and puberty. She also wrote about masturbation, premarital sex, divorce and death. Perhaps as a result, “kids opened up to me in a way they couldn’t to their parents,” says Blume, who was filmed in her Key West, Florida, bookstore, pulling items from a carton containing 50 years of poignant letters.
Kids opened up to me in a way they couldn’t to their parents.
Turning to her own life, the former Judy Sussman “grew up as a good girl with a bad girl lurking inside.” Born in 1938 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a dentist and a homemaker, she pursued the well-worn path of nice Jewish girls. She married in 1959 at age 21 while she was still a student at New York University and graduated with a teaching degree in 1961. That year daughter Randy was born, son Lawrence two years later.
Discontent as a suburban New Jersey housewife and feeling that she never quite fit in, she began to write. Her first marriage, which began just five weeks after her father’s sudden death, lasted 16 years. Her second marriage ended after just a few years. She wrote about divorce in her 1972 kids’ book, “It’s Not the End of the World,” as well as in her adult novels.
Never one to shy away from controversy, Blume grappled with premarital sex in “Forever,” a 1975 book that continues to provoke censors. In 1984, during the Reagan era, her books were banned by schools and libraries, she received countless death threats, and she confronted right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan on “Crossfire.”
These days, Blume no longer takes on right-wing zealots. Instead, she puts her energy into supporting Planned Parenthood and the National Coalition Against Censorship. She also gives banned books prominent placement in her bookstore.
She has retired from writing books, and the documentary reveals mellow moments shared with Cooper, whom she married in 1987. They’re captured bicycling along the shore, kayaking and laughing.
The documentary avoids some of the heavier episodes in her life, including two personal bouts with cancer and Cooper’s with pancreatic cancer. Blume acknowledges an “awareness that I’m old. Who knows how much longer you have?” Now a grandmother, she enjoys spending time with her family, including the extended family of pen pals who are still part of her life.