Jean S. Harris, Killer of Scarsdale Diet Doctor, Dies at 89 - The New York Times The New York Times N.Y. / Region |Headmistress, Jilted Lover, Killer, Then a Force for Good in Jail Search N.Y. / Region | Jean S. Harris, 1923-2012 Headmistress, Jilted Lover, Killer, Then a Force for Good in Jail Continue reading the main story Photo Jean S. Harris, center, leaving the Westchester County Courthouse with one of her attorneys, Bonnie Steingart, in White Plains, N.Y., in 1981. Credit Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times Jean S. Harris, the private-school headmistress whose 1981 trial for the murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., physician galvanized a nation with its story of vengeance by a woman scorned, died on Sunday at an assisted-living center in New Haven. She was 89. Her death was confirmed by her son James.

For more than a year — from her arrest on March 10, 1980, to her sentencing for second-degree murder on March 20, 1981 — Mrs. Harris’s case was front-page news. The trial provided the fascination of a love triangle involving the cultivated headmistress of an exclusive girls’ school, a wealthy cardiologist whose book, “The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet,” had been a best seller, and an attractive younger rival for his affection. If Mrs. Harris was to be believed, it was the story of an attempted suicide by a jilted woman that turned into the unintentional shooting of the man who had rejected her. But there was an underlying social debate that drew commentary from writers, sociologists and feminists and antifeminists alike. Mrs. Harris’s passionate defenders saw her plight as epitomizing the fragile position of an aging but fiercely independent woman who, because of limited options, was dependent on a man who mistreated her. Her detractors, who were just as ardent, suggested that such reasoning made it seem that it was the physician, Dr. Herman Tarnower, who was on trial. Continue reading the main story Mrs.

Harris was sentenced to 15 years to life, and spent 12 of those years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, N.Y. But she managed to salvage that seemingly wasted period through a remarkable prison life. She counseled fellow female prisoners on how to take care of their children, and she set up a center where infants born to inmates can spend a year near their mothers. Then, after her release in 1993 following a grant of clemency by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, she set up a foundation that raised millions of dollars for scholarships for children of women in prison in New York State. Advertisement Continue reading the main story She also lectured about her often incongruous experiences with inmates. “They looked at me as a rich white woman, even though some of the call girls earned six times what I did as a headmistress,” she told an interviewer. At the center of the murder case was Jean Struven Harris, a slight, blue-eyed blonde, then 56, who was a product of comfortable suburban homes and a Smith College education.

Headstrong, articulate and ambitious, she was the headmistress of the Madeira School, a boarding school for affluent girls on a sprawling wooded campus in Virginia. At 10:56 on the night of March 10, 1980, the White Plains police received a telephone call from Dr. Tarnower’s secluded glass-and-brick house on a 6.8-acre estate in Purchase, N.Y. Lying in an upstairs bedroom dying of four bullet wounds was Dr. Tarnower, the 69-year-old founder of the Scarsdale Medical Group, whose diet book had sold three million copies. When the police arrived at the driveway, they came across Mrs. Harris, wearing tan slacks and a mink jacket, driving away. She contended that she was going to look for a phone booth to call the police. But officers found a .32-caliber gun in the glove compartment, and a detective later testified that she told him: “I did it. ... I’ve been through so much hell with him. He slept with every woman he could.” Dr. Tarnower and Mrs.

Harris, the divorced mother of two grown sons and 13 years his junior, had been lovers for 14 years. But in the years before the shooting, the doctor had begun appearing at dinner parties and taking vacations with his office assistant, Lynne Tryforos, a divorced woman who was then 37. For years Dr. Tarnower, a lifelong bachelor, had refused to marry Mrs. Harris. Now, as a wealthy man, he could dally with the even younger Mrs. Tryforos. Photo Jean S. Harris in 1984. Credit ABC In her eight days on the witness stand, Mrs. Harris was able to describe her betrayal with an arch wit that charmed the courtroom. She recalled how she once discovered a birthday greeting from Mrs. Tryforos to Dr. Tarnower in a small advertisement on the front page of The New York Times, and how she responded: “Herman, why don’t you use the Goodyear blimp next time? I think it’s available.” She testified that by March 1980, she had decided to commit suicide and had bought the revolver. She drove from Virginia to Dr.

Tarnower’s place, she said, so she could have a few quiet moments with him before she shot herself “at the side of the pond where there were daffodils in the spring.” When she went upstairs, she testified, she found him in his pajamas asleep in his bedroom. She noticed Mrs. Tryforos’s negligee, hair curlers and jewelry and fell into a rage, she said, deciding to shoot herself right there. Advertisement Continue reading the main story When she drew the revolver out of her pocketbook, she testified, Dr. Tarnower tried to stop her by pushing her hand down, but the gun fired. They struggled again, and the gun went off a second time. Mrs. Harris, however, could not account for two of the bullets. On Feb. 24, 1981, after eight days of deliberation, the jury of four men and eight women decided that she had murdered the doctor. The trial drew more than 100 reporters from around the country. The writer Shana Alexander and the critic Diana Trilling both wrote popular books about Mrs. Harris’s experience. Mrs. Trilling compared Mrs. Harris to Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary; Mrs.

Harris, she said, was “material asking to be written but with no one to write her.” Some feminists rationalized Mrs. Harris’s action as legitimate revenge, although Betty Friedan, describing Mrs. Harris as a “pathetic masochist,” denied that there were any feminist issues involved in the trial. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Mrs. Harris took the guilty verdict calmly, but at her sentencing a month later, she was trembling with defiance. “I did not murder Dr. Tarnower; I loved him very much,” she told the judge. “No one in the world feels his loss more than I do. I’m not guilty.” At Bedford Hills, she held various jobs. She organized the prison library, tutored inmates for the state’s high school equivalency examinations and served as a teacher’s aide in the prison’s nursery. “I was lucky that I could find something useful to do,” she told The Times in a 1993 interview. “I didn’t twiddle my thumbs. Really, I got up every morning and went to school and taught.

I know it was useful, and I was lucky to have that job.” Photo Dr. Herman Tarnower Credit Associated Press She wrote an article for New York magazine on prison conditions, describing a humiliating search of her body by a guard. In 1986, she wrote “Stranger in Two Worlds,” offering her account of the Tarnower relationship as well as a chronicle of prison life. Almost 70 years old when she got out in 1993, she tried to live out of the limelight, despite the occasional made-for-TV movie or book about the case (Ellen Burstyn played Mrs. Harris in a 1981 movie, and Annette Bening played her in 2005). She devoted herself to gardening outside her cabin on the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, writing and taking walks with her golden retriever, Lainey, who was named after a nun who directed the prison’s children center. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Jean Witte Struven was born in Chicago on April 27, 1923, and grew up in the fashionable Cleveland suburbs of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights.

Her father, Albert Struven, was a civil engineer who became vice president of a construction company that built oil refineries and steel plants around the world. She was educated at the Cleveland area’s leading private school and majored in economics at Smith College. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude in 1945. She went on to receive a master’s in education at Wayne State University. Soon after leaving Smith, she married James Harris, the son of a middle-level chemicals executive from Detroit. She once told an interviewer that she had agreed to marry him largely to defy her father, who did not like him. The couple settled in Grosse Pointe, Mich., and Mrs. Harris took a job teaching at a private school where some members of the Ford family sent their children. She gained a measure of social prestige, yet Mr. Harris’s career in a carburetor company languished. Their marriage foundered, and in 1964, she filed for divorce. Mr. Harris died in 1977.

Besides her son James, she is survived by another son, David; a sister, Mary Lynch; a brother, Robert Struven; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Hoping to put her sons through college, she took a higher-paying job as the director of the middle school of the Springside School, a girls’ academy in Philadelphia. It was in that position that she met Dr. Tarnower at a dinner party. Both had made trips to the Soviet Union in recent years, and they compared notes. Dr. Tarnower, the son of a hat manufacturer, was self-assured, urbane and witty. He was a hunter and a sports fisherman, and on his travels he collected Buddhas. He wooed her with roses and dances at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. In the first year of their courtship, he gave her an engagement ring and proposed marriage. But Mrs. Harris hesitated, and soon he told her that he could not go through with the marriage. But the romance continued. Early in 1972, Mrs.

Harris became the headmistress of the Thomas School in Rowayton, Conn., and bought a house in Mahopac, N.Y., a 45-minute drive from Dr. Tarnower’s house. The Thomas School merged with another school in 1975, and a year and a half later the position at the Madeira School opened up. The geographic distance between them appeared to place strains on their relationship. Dr. Tarnower began dating Mrs. Tryforos while continuing with Mrs. Harris. In her three years at the Madeira School, Mrs. Harris was by most accounts a capable administrator and a strict disciplinarian who, among other actions, barred students from the bars in the Georgetown section of Washington. Shortly before the murder, her position at the school was imperiled by what some thought was her imprudence in suspending four student leaders after marijuana seeds and pipes were found in their dormitory. Mrs. Harris grew weary of such conflict, and a letter of resignation was among the notes she wrote shortly before leaving for Dr. Tarnower’s house. Correction: January 1, 2013 An obituary on Saturday about Jean S.

Harris, the private school headmistress convicted in the 1980 murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., doctor, referred incorrectly to the Thomas School in Rowayton, Conn., where she became headmistress in 1972. It merged in 1975 with the Low-Heywood School in Stamford (now the King Low Heywood Thomas School). It did not close. Correction: January 8, 2013 An obituary on Dec. 29 about Jean S. Harris, the private school headmistress convicted in the 1980 murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., doctor, misstated the location of the Springside School, a girls’ academy where she once worked. It is in Philadelphia, not outside Philadelphia. A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Headmistress, Jilted Lover, Killer, Then a Force for Good in Jail. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe The Killing of Scarsdale Diet Doctor Herman Tarnower Leaves a Single Haunting Question: Why?

The Killing of Scarsdale Diet Doctor Herman Tarnower Leaves a Single Haunting Question: Why? Email Dr. Herman Tarnower, author of the best-selling Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, was himself a man of demanding appetites—for high cuisine, high art, big game and, fatally, women. Wealthy, witty and companionable, Tarnower, 69, would smile when asked why he never married and say only: “I was too busy with the practice of medicine to get around to it.” Yet his romantic life-was prodigious. For the last 14 years he had sustained a love affair with Madeira School headmistress Jean Struven Harris, 56—an elegant woman as strong-minded and well-educated as he. For the last four years he had also been romancing his attractive blond office assistant, Lynne Brundage Tryforos, 37—and his neighbors in quiet-rich Purchase, N.Y. were abuzz with reports of his other affairs.

Indeed, when the physician was found on his bedroom floor dying of four .32-caliber bullet wounds, police might have suspected a number of spurned women in Tarnower’s life—had they not found Jean Harris, distraught, at the scene of the crime. Having established that she had shot Tarnower with her own gun, police faced only one remaining mystery: Why? The answer to that riddle may well lie in an understanding of the three principal players—one dead, one out on bail, one in seclusion—who acted out what seems increasingly a suburban gothic tale. By all accounts, Tarnower was a charming and magnetic man. The son of a New York millinery manufacturer, he excelled academically, and after interning at Bellevue, he set up a cardiological practice in exclusive Scarsdale. Business was good—so good that the seven-figure success of his diet book in 1979 struck him as redundant. His tasteful brick-and-glass contemporary house was filled with art treasures and animal trophies bagged on frequent travels around the world. With the same passion and finicky taste, acquaintances say, he collected women.

Born in Cleveland, graduated magna from Smith, Jean Harris is thought to have met Tarnower while she was living in Philadelphia and teaching at a fashionable girls’ school. As an applicant to be headmistress at Virginia’s posh Madeira two years ago, she impressed school authorities with her genteel bearing, obvious intelligence and strong convictions. She didn’t disappoint them: A strict conservative, Harris organized raids on dormitories in search of marijuana, expelled several girls who were caught with it, and even deleted from chapel services hymns she considered too boisterous. That strong-minded, old-fashioned sensibility, friends say, was deeply offended by Tarnower’s refusal to marry her. “She came from a background that said women marry men—they don’t have affairs,” comments one recent confidant. “But she loved him, so she hung around.” Recalls another Virginia friend: “She said to me about the girls, ‘I don’t approve of all this sleeping around. I don’t understand it.’ But she was doing it herself. She couldn’t resolve that conflict.” Out of the adoring female satellites who circled Tarnower, one came to eclipse the rest.

Lynne Tryforos joined the staff of his Scarsdale Medical Center eight years ago; their romance reportedly began four years later, and a recipe in his book gives a nod to it: “Spinach Delight à la Lynne” (it’s creamed spinach made with yogurt). Like Harris, Tryforos is a slim blond divorcée, but the resemblance ends there. Acquaintances describe Harris as “an alabaster queen,” “brilliant,” “intense,” while Tryforos is known in Scarsdale as “attractive,” “lovely” and “sunny.” She had dropped out of Endicott Junior College to marry Nicholas Tryforos, co-owner of a florist shop. Four years ago they divorced and Lynne moved into a small Scarsdale house with her two daughters, 14 and 10. Then when Harris left for Virginia, she became Tarnower’s most frequent date in Westchester. She appeared with him at the chic gatherings (including his last dinner party) that were once Harris’ exclusive domain. At about the same time, colleagues noticed that Harris seemed anxious and depressed.

At Madeira, she complained, “People haven’t really invited me to dinner—they tend to see me as an employee.” Her relationship with Tarnower was cold comfort. “She was getting older and she was desperate,” says a friend. “Tarnower must have been her last chance. He looked like a lizard, but he had everything she wanted—money, a prestigious career, standing. If she let him go, that meant giving up her dreams.” Harris had already returned Tarnower’s gift of a diamond ring, reportedly worth $50,000, and her defense attorney has suggested that she drove to Westchester the day of the shooting to get Tarnower to kill her. A psychiatrist who has met her finds that plausible: “In giving him the weapon, she was in effect saying, ‘Please kill me outright, because you’re killing me anyway.’ She wanted to show him how he had made her feel.” Whatever her motivation, Harris killed Tarnower, destroying her own hopes and those of her rival. After the funeral, Tryforos took her two daughters out of school and went into seclusion, her love dead, her future uncertain. For Harris, now hospitalized and awaiting trial, the prospect is even bleaker.

“She’s ruined her life and she knows it,” sums up one friend. “She can’t go back to the world that she came from. She will never be accepted in people’s living rooms again.” Show Full Article Jean S. Harris, ‘Scarsdale Diet’ Doctor Killer, Dies At 89 Jean S. Harris, ‘Scarsdale Diet’ Doctor Killer, Dies At 89 Theresa Hurst Jean S. Harris, convicted in the 1980 murder of Dr. Herman Tarnower, dies at 89-years-old. Confirmed by her son, Harris passed away on December 23 at a Connecticut assisted living facility. Given a life sentence for her role in the Scarsdale Diet doctor’s death, she received clemency in December of 1992. The murder case was the subject of sensationalized headlines across the nation for nearly two years, according to NewsDay New York. Dr. Herman Tarnower, a millionaire cardiologist, was well known for authoring The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet. The doctor was allegedly part of a bizarre love triangle involving Jean Harris and Lynne Tryforos, his young office assistant.

Harris supporters believe that after their 14-year-long affair, the Scarsdale Diet doctor was pushing Harris away in favor of his younger lover. Police arrested Jean Harris on March 10, 1980 for the shooting death of Tarnower, although she continued to maintain her innocence. Harris claimed that the killing was accidental, occurring as she attempted suicide with the gun after confronting Tarnower about his affair with Tryforos. She was subsequently found guilty of second-degree murder and received a 15 years to life sentence on March 20, 1981. According to The Associated Press , Harris survived two heart attacks while serving time in prison. Undergoing heart bypass surgery in December of 1992, she received clemency moments before from Governor Mario Cuomo. When she was released on parole shortly thereafter, Harris had served just under 12 years of her sentence. The New York Times writes that while in prison Harris used her skills as a former school headmistress to advise female inmates regarding childcare. She developed a center to house infants born to prison mothers that allowed them to spend a year close to each other.

In 1993 Harris created the Bedford Hills Children’s Foundation which has raised scholarship funds for children of woman imprisoned in New York State. Jean S. Harris dies leaving behind two sons, two grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. The Strange Affair of Madeira School Headmistress Jean Harris and Scarsdale Diet Doctor Herman Tarnower -- New York Magazine By Anthony Haden-Guest From the March 31, 1980 issue of New York Magazine. It was the last Friday of the term, and tinged with discontent. This marijuana business, the expulsion of a handful of seniors for flirting with the weed, had some of the girls nervous, mutinous. But Jean Struven Harris, headmistress of the Madeira School, did not flinch. Her vision of Madeira was, as always, pure, crystalline, hostile to error. She spoke of Duty, and of Caliber, and, above all, of Integrity. Butï¿½some of the girls noticedï¿½Jean Harris seemed unusually ill at ease. Run-down. That Friday, she dropped in at the infirmary, where a nurse gave her some shots for anemia.

She proceeded with the day’s business calmly enoughï¿½she had announced that she intended to stay on campus for the three-week breakï¿½but, showing some distress, she unexpectedly canceled a 3:30 appointment. The girls left Madeira that Saturday morning, except for some 40-odd juniors who had holiday internships on Capitol Hill. One of the juniors went to see Jean Harris on Sunday. Jean Harris lived in a two-story red-brick house called ï¿½The Hill,ï¿½ and she had said that it was ï¿½always open.ï¿½ It was seldom open quite so literally, however. The door was open wide, the girl says, and the usually meticulous place was the biggest mess you can imagine. ï¿½Clothes were thrown all over the floor,ï¿½ she recalls, ï¿½and the kitchen looked as if she hadn’t been in there for a week.ï¿½ Jean Harris herself was nowhere to be seen, and the girl departed, puzzled, her problem unresolved. Jean Struven Harris spent much of Monday writing.

She wrote a letter, extraordinarily long and rambling, and then she put the sheets together in no particular order and stuffed them into a manila envelope. She addressed the letter to Dr. Herman Tarnower and dropped it off at the small post office on the Madeira campus. Just to make completely sure, she sent it by registered mail, which requires a signature. No prevarications, no excuses. Herman Tarnower, best known as the millionaire creator of the ï¿½Scarsdale Diet,ï¿½ had been her lover for fourteen years. But, since her coming to Madeira, perhaps even since his newly found celebrity, he had been slip-sliding away. There was Another Woman. Her shining worldï¿½Duty, Caliber, Integrity, those safe and shining abstractionsï¿½lay about her in ugly shreds and splinters. That night Jean Harris was expected for dinner with John and Kiku Hanes. It was a typical ï¿½intelligentï¿½ Washington dinner, a sit-down for fourteen, nothing to do with Madeira, no alums, no parents, just well-informed people, like Jean Harris.

ï¿½I had spoken to her the day before,ï¿½ Kiku Hanes says. ï¿½She was looking forward to it. There was an empty place, but I wasn’t worried at all. I know what being a headmistress is like.ï¿½ In fact, Jean Harris did dress as if for dinner: a trim ensemble of black jacket, white shirt, black skirt. It seems she changed her mind. She wrote some further notes, these detailing her inner ferment, and she scattered them around the small and comfortable house that (she wrote) she had no intention of ever seeing again. Jean Struven Harris fetched her gun, a Harrington & Richardson .32-caliber revolver, which she had acquired a couple of years back at Irving’s Sport Shops in Tysons Corner. It was still in its box. She dumped it in her car, an unshowy blue-and-white 1973 Chrysler, and took off on the five-hour drive. The weather, so unseasonably mild, broke while she was still on the road. An inconsiderate thunderstorm lashed the rich suburbs, and she arrived to find Dr.

Tarnower’s house, that half-million-dollars’ worth of neo-japonaiserie where she had spent so much pleasant time, muffled with black and steaming blankets of rain. The burglary call came through to the Harrison police at 10:59 P.M. When he arrived, patrolman Brian McKenna found the angular body of Herman Tarnower, 69, sprawled crooked and awkward in an upstairs bedroom, dying in beige pajamas. Tarnower tried to speak, but managed only random sounds. Jean Harris stood there, distraught, her natty outfit rain sodden. The headmistress of Madeira School, whose roster of pupils, past and present, reads like a Fortune-hunters’ 500, was booked for Murder Two. The headmistress and the millionaire doctor, the headlines ran. Certainly, it has a better sound to it than the sleazy mayhem that usually occupies the tabloids and the TV news. There’s a ring of that comfortably titillating British detective-story world, those clubs and country houses where the upper middle classes plot one another’s baroque demises.

No wonder that cigar box of a courtroom in Harrison allured such media luminaries as Shana Alexander (who wore black mink), sitting behind the defendant, just as she had done through the seven months of the equally classy Patty Hearst trial: the Shana Alexander position. From the Mar 31, 1980 issue of New York Scarsdale Diet Scarsdale Diet Definition The Scarsdale diet is a rapid weight loss regimen classified as a very low-calorie diet, or VLCD. It is also one of the oldest low-carbohydrate diets still followed by some dieters. Although the first edition of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet was published in 1978, over a quarter-century ago, the book is still in print as of early 2007. It is reported to be particularly popular in France in the early 2000s. Origins The Scarsdale diet began as a two-page typewritten office handout drawn up in the 1950s by Dr. Herman Tarnower, a cardiologist who had built a medical center in Scarsdale, a middle- to upper middle-class community in Westchester County, New York.

Tarnower had written the short reducing guide for patients who needed to lose weight for the sake of their hearts; he was not a professional nutritionist or dietitian. The two articles that he published in medical journals have to do with fever as a symptom of a heart attack and with management of congestive heart failure. His primary motive in writing down his diet plan was impatience; he disliked having to spend time explaining nutrition or other health issues to his patients and so chose to make up a weight-reduction handout. Tarnower gave an interview shortly before his death to the journal Behavioral Medicine, in which he stated, ‘‘If you don’t have a routine written out that you can give to patients with common disorders, it will destroy you. You try to go over all the instructions with each patient, but no physician has that much patience.’’ Tarnower’s patients often copied the diet for their friends, who in turn sent photocopies to other friends. At some point in the mid-1970s, following the early success of the Atkins diet, one of Tarnower’s friends, Oscar Dystel, suggested that he expand his office handout into a full-length book.

Tarnower hired a writer, Samm Sinclair Baker, who had published other books in the field of nutrition, and the first edition of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet was printed in 1978. It became an immediate bestseller, going through 21 printings in its first ten months in hardcover format. Tarnower’s book became the choice of four book clubs; it sold the second-highest number of copies (over 642,000) of hardcover books published in 1979, outdone only by a humorous book by Erma Bombeck. According to Time magazine, Tarnower’s diet book grossed more than $11 million by the spring of 1980. Sinclair Baker’s most important contribution to the book was to suggest four new programs that represented variations on the basic diet: the Scarsdale Diet for Epicurean Tastes, the Scarsdale International Diet, the Scarsdale Vegetarian Diet, and the Scarsdale Money-Saver Diet. These will be described more fully below.

Tarnower’s book received an initial surge in sales when it was featured in such prestigious fashion magazines as Vogue, which ran an article on ‘‘the Scarsdale-diet rage’’ in 1979. It received an even bigger boost when Dr. Tarnower was shot and killed in March 1980 by Jean Harris, a long-term lover who was then the headmistress of a prestigious private school for girls in Virginia. The made-for-media aspects of the murder and the trial that followed guaranteed that the diet book would receive its share of attention from the press and the public. Description The Scarsdale diet can be summarized as a very low-calorie low-carbohydrate diet with a slightly different ratio of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. An adult woman who follows the diet exactly will consume between 650 and 1000 calories per day. The nutrient ratio, which is unusual for a low-carbohydrate diet, is 43% protein, 22.5% fat, and 34.5% carbohydrate.

KEY TERMS Ketone bodies— A group of three compounds (ace-toacetic acid, acetone, and beta-hydroxybutyric acid) that are formed in an intermediate stage of fat metabolism and excreted in the urine. Ketosis— An abnormal increase in the number of ketone bodies in the body, produced when the liver breaks down fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. Ketosis is a common side effect of low-carbohydrate diets like the Scarsdale diet. If continued over too long a period of time, ketosis can cause serious damage to the kidneys and liver. Porphyria— A hereditary metabolic disorder characterized by the excretion in the urine of porphyrins, which are molecules that normally combine with iron atoms to form heme-a protein found in hemoglobin, the red pigment that gives blood its color. Some types of porphyria can be triggered by fasting or diets with severe calorie restriction like the Scarsdale diet. Very low-calorie diet (VLCD)— A term used by nutritionists to classify weight-reduction diets that allow around 800 or fewer calories a day. The Scarsdale diet is a VLCD.

Basic Scarsdale diet The basic Scarsdale diet is to be followed for either seven to 14 days, alternating with two weeks off. The dieter is instructed to drink at least 4 glasses of water, tea, or diet soda every day in order to flush waste products from the body. The dieter may add the following seasonings to her foods: herbs, salt, pepper, lemon, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, mustard, or ketchup. An important feature of the basic Scarsdale diet is its rigidity. Although calories are not counted, the dieter is restricted to the three meal plans for each day; snacking is not allowed. When the diet was still in its office-handout stage, some of Dr. Tarnower’s patients asked him whether they might substitute other fruits in season for the grapefruit that forms the centerpiece of the basic plan (18 servings in the course of the two-week regimen, 14 for breakfast and 4 for dessert at lunch or dinner), or substitute raw radishes and cauliflower for carrots and celery sticks. Tarnower invariably told his patients that they had to stick to the plan exactly as written.

It was not until the basic diet was expanded into the book-length edition of 1978 that Tarnower seems to have realized that the meal plans could incorporate a greater variety of foods without requiring alterations in the nutrient balance or calorie count. Sample menus from the basic diet Day 1 Breakfast: coffee or tea with sugar substitute plus 1/2 grapefruit (the breakfast menu is the same for all 7 or 14 days of the diet) Lunch: any amount of lean beef, chicken, or fish plus tomato salad plus coffee or tea Dinner: broiled fish plus tomato and lettuce salad plus 1/2 grapefruit Day 3 Breakfast: coffee or tea with sugar substitute plus 1/2 grapefruit Lunch: tuna salad plus 1/2 grapefruit Dinner: 2 lean pork chops plus mixed green salad plus coffee Day 5 Breakfast: coffee or tea with sugar substitute plus 1/2 grapefruit Lunch: all the dry cheese you want plus raw or cooked spinach plus 1 slice of dry toast Dinner: broiled fish plus green salad plus 1 slice dry toast Variations on the basic diet As was noted earlier, Dr.

Tarnower’s co-author was instrumental in expanding the basic diet into four additional options that offered the dieter a bit more variety.

For purposes of comparison, here are the Day 5 menus from three of these 1978 additions: Day 5, Gourmet Diet for Epicurean Tastes Breakfast: coffee or tea with sugar substitute plus 1/2 grapefruit or 1/2 cup diced fresh pineapple, 1/2 fresh mango, 1/2 papaya, 1/2 canteloupe, or ‘‘a generous slice of honeydew, casaba, or other available melon.’’ Lunch: eggs and chicken livers, farm style; plus tomatoes, lettuce, celery, olives, or endives; plus 1 slice of protein toast; plus coffee, tea, or demitasse Dinner: consomme madrilene; plus baked chicken breasts; plus spinach delight; plus a fresh peach with raspberries; plus coffee or tea Day 5, International Diet Lunch: pickled eggplant and cheese sticks; plus salad greens, ‘‘all you want,’’ with vinegar and lemon dressing; plus a fresh peach with raspberry sauce; plus coffee, tea, or espresso Dinner: baked stuffed mushrooms; plus veal Napolitaine; plus 1/4 cup boiled white rice; plus zucchni stew; plus

 coffee, tea, or espresso Day 5, Money-Saver Diet Breakfast: 1/2 grapefruit or canteloupe, plus coffee or tea with artificial sweetener Lunch: 2 eggs, any style, but prepared without fat; zucchni; 1 slice dry protein bread, no spread; Dinner: broiled, boiled, roasted, or barbecued chicken, ‘‘all you want,’’ with skin and visible fat removed before cooking; plus ‘‘plenty of spinach’’ plus coffee or tea Function The basic purpose of the Scarsdale diet is rapid weight loss.

It is not intended as a lifetime regimen of sensible weight control; one of its distinctive features, in fact, is that the dieter is supposed to alternate one or two weeks on the diet with two weeks off. Benefits The only benefit of the Scarsdale diet appears to be rapid initial weight loss. Most persons who have tried it and reported on their experiences found it unpleasant because of its lack of flexibility and the boring meal plans prescribed in the basic diet. One British reporter described the Scarsdale diet as ‘‘Bad news ... A raw vegetable nightmare so extreme that Bugs Bunny would have revolted.’’ Precautions The Scarsdale diet has been criticized by nutritionists for a number of health-related deficiencies: Nothing is said in the 1978 edition of the diet about the importance of physical exercise in a weight-reduction regimen. Many nutritionists point out that the 700-1000 calories allowed each day are inadequate for a healthy woman who is even moderately active, let alone one who participates in sports or other forms of physical exercise. The exclusion of milk from the Scarsdale diet means that the dieter’s calcium intake will be too low.

This low level of calcium intake poses risks for women who are postmenopausal or over 50. The dieter does not learn how to choose foods wisely during the two weeks off the diet or in real-world situations like restaurants or meals shared with family or friends. Most of the weight lost is in the form of water, and is quickly regained when the dieter resumes normal eating. The Scarsdale diet demands more than the usual amount of will power from the dieter because of its rigidity and low-calorie structure. Because of these deficiencies and drawbacks, anyone considering the Scarsdale diet in order to lose weight rapidly should consult their physician and a professional dietitian Risks The Scarsdale diet does not allow enough calories for women with active life styles or for adolescents who are still growing. It is completely inappropriate for children. It carries the same risks for the dieter associated with other VLCDs, namely fatigue, constipation or diarrhea, irritability, and an increased risk of gallstone formation. The Scarsdale diet has also been reported to trigger episodes of porphyria, an inherited metabolic disorder, in patients with a genetic susceptibility to the disease.

Porphyria, which is characterized by the excretion of excessive numbers of porphyrins (molecules used in the formation of the red pigment that gives blood its color) can be brought on by fasting or by long-term use of a VLCD. The low-carbohydrate profile of the Scarsdale diet also poses the risk of potential kidney or liver damage resulting from ketosis. Ketosis is a metabolic process that occurs when the carbohydrates that serve the body as its basic fuel drop below a certain level. The body must then burn protein and fats to maintain its energy level. When fats are broken down, fatty acids are released into the bloodstream. There they are converted to ketone bodies, which are mild acids excreted in the urine. Excretion of the ketone bodies, however, places an additional burden on the kidneys. If ketosis continues for long periods of time without medical supervision, the kidneys may eventually fail. The health risks associated with ketosis are one reason why the Scarsdale diet should never be used for more than 14 days at a time.

In addition, pregnant women, alcoholics, and persons already diagnosed with kidney or liver disease should not use the Scarsdale or any other low-carbohydrate diet for weight control. QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR DOCTOR Considering that the Scarsdale diet does not reflect recent advances in the science of nutrition, would you recommend this diet? Have any of your patients ever tried the Scarsdale Diet? If so, were they able to keep off any weight they lost? If so, did they develop any health problems while following it? Research and general acceptance The Scarsdale diet has not been the subject of extensive medical research, possibly because of its association with a notorious legal case. There is only one article in the medical literature that reported on the diet’s usefulness as a means to rapid initial weight reduction for people who were then placed on less restrictive weight-loss regimens. The article, however, was published in 1982 and its findings would require reevaluation a quarter-century later. Dr. Tarnower himself never tested the diet in a clinical trial or published any outcome studies of his patients.

Although the cover of the 1978 edition of The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet promises a weight loss of ‘‘up to 20 pounds in 14 days’’ the only evidence provided to support this claim is anecdotal quotations from some of the doctor’s patients. Although the Scarsdale diet was popular when it was first published in book form, it is considered a fad diet as of the early 2000s, and listed as such by the American Dietetic Association (ADA). Although the publication on fad diets published by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) does not mention the Scarsdale diet by name, it would clearly come under the heading of controlled carbohydrates diets, which the AAFP does not recommend. Much of the early popularity of the Scarsdale diet may have been due to snob appeal. Dr. Tarnower was disliked as a person by many of his patients as well as by others who knew him for his pretentiousness and open social climbing.

The association of the diet with the town of Scarsdale, which was a symbol of prosperity to people in the New York area, may well have encouraged some readers to think of weight loss as a path to economic or social success. Dr. Tarnower was obsessed with his own trim figure as evidence of his professional stature, reportedly dieting whenever his weight went even slightly over 174 pounds. One measure of the Scarsdale diet’s loss of popularity is that the upscale fashion magazines that touted it in the late 1970s described it less than a decade later as one of the ‘‘diets that don’t work.’’ In general, researchers in the United States and Canada maintain that VLCDs are not superior in any way to conventional low-calorie diets (LCDs). The first report of the National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity on these diets, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993, noted that ‘‘:Current VLCDs are generally safe when used under proper medical supervision in moderately and severely obese patients (body mass index > 30) and are usually effective in promoting significant short-term weight loss . . . .

[but] long-term maintenance of weight loss with VLCDs is not very satisfactory and is no better than with other forms of obesity treatment.’’ One Canadian study reported in 2005 that a history of weight cycling tended to lower the health benefits that obese patients could receive from VLCDs, while a 2006 study carried out at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that the use of liquid meal replacement diets (LMRs) with a daily calorie level of 1000–1500 calories ‘‘provide[d] an effective and less expensive alternative to VLCDs.’’ The only study that reported that VLCDs are ‘‘one of the better treatment modalities related to long-term weight-maintenance success’’ was completed in the Netherlands in 2001. The Dutch researchers added, however, that an active follow-up program, including behavior modification therapy and exercise, is essential to the long-term success that they reported. Resources BOOKS Bowden, Jonny. Living the Low Carb Life: From Atkins to the Zone: Choosing the Diet That’s Right for You. New York: Barnes & Noble Publishing, 2004.

Compares the Scarsdale diet to some other well-known low-carbohydrate regimens. Tarnower, Herman, MD, and Samm Sinclair Baker. The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet Plus Dr. Tarnower’s Lifetime Keep-Slim Program. New York: Rawson, Wade Publishers, 1978. Trilling, Diana. Mrs. Harris: The Death of the Scarsdale Diet Doctor. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Contains some background information on the Scarsdale diet as well as an account of Dr. Tarnower’s death and the subsequent murder trial. PERIODICALS ‘‘Death of the Diet Doctor.’’ Time, March 24, 1980. Fortino, Denise. ‘‘Famous Diets That Don’t Work.’’ Harper’s Bazaar 120 (October 1987): 94–96. Gilden Tsai, A., and T. A. Wadden.

‘‘The Evolution of Very-Low-Calorie Diets: An Update and Meta-Analysis.’’ Obesity (Silver Spring) 14 (August 2006): 1283–1293. Hart, K. E., and E. M. Warriner. ‘Weight Loss and Biomedical Health Improvement on a Very Low Calorie Diet: The Moderating Role of History of Weight Cycling.‘ Behavioral Medicine 30 (Winter 2005): 161–170. Maxted, Anna. ‘Slimmer after 16 Years of Diets? Huh, Fat Chance.‘ The Independent (London), July 16, 1995. National Task Force on the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity, National Institutes of Health. ‘Very Low-Calorie Diets.‘ Journal of the American Medical Association 270 (August 25, 1993): 967–974. Quiroz-Kendall, E., F. A. Wilson, and L. E. King, Jr.

‘Acute Variegate Porphyria Following a Scarsdale Gourmet Diet.‘ Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology 8 (January 1983): 46-49. Saris,W. H. ‘Very-Low-Calorie Diets and Sustained Weight Loss.‘ Obesity Research 9 (Suppl. 4): 295S–301S. ‘Top 25 Best-Selling Hardcovers of 1979.‘ Time Capsule, Home Textiles Today, September 6, 2004, 36. Weber, Melva. ‘The Scarsdale-diet Rage.‘ Vogue 169 (January 1979): 139-140. Wing, R. R., L. H. Epstein, and B. Shapira. ‘The Effect of Increasing Initial Weight Loss with the Scarsdale Diet on Subsequent Weight Loss in a Behavioral Treatment Program.‘ Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 50 (June 1982): 446-447. OTHER American Dietetic Association (ADA).

Fad Diet Timeline— Fad Diets throughout the Years. Press release, February 1, 2007. Available online at ORGANIZATIONS American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). P.O. Box 11210, Shawnee Mission, KS 66207-1210. Telephone: (800) 274-2237 or (913) 906-6000. Website: American Dietetic Association (ADA). 120 South Riverside Plaza, Suite 2000, Chicago, IL 60606-6995. Telephone: (800): 877-1600. Website: Dietitians of Canada/Les dietetistes du Canada (DC). 480 University Avenue, Suite 604, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 1V2. Telephone: (416) 596-0857. Website: Partnership for Healthy Weight Management (PHWM), c/o Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Bureau of Consumer Protection.

601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 4302, Washington, DC. 20580. Website: gov/weightloss/. Rebecca J Frey, Ph.D. ‘Scarsdale Diet’ Doctor Killer Jean Harris Dead At 89 « CBS New York Filed Under: Dr. Herman Tarnower , Jean Harris , Lou Young , Scarsdale Diet doctor , Sean Hennessey Jean Harris, the woman convicted of murdering "Scarsdale Diet" doctor Herman Tarnower, died on Dec. 23, 2012, in Connecticut at the age of 89. (Photo: CBS 2) NEW YORK (CBS 2) — She was seen as both the scorned woman who wanted vengeance, and the woman caught up in a tragic accident. Jean Harris, the convicted killer of the “Scarsdale Diet” doctor, died Sunday at an assisted living facility in New Haven, Conn., at the age of 89, CBS 2’s Sean Hennessey reported. The story of the scorned lover killing her cheating partner attracted headlines around the world, yet Harris never wanted the spotlight, and went to her grave insisting she never murdered anyone.

“I feel beyond the question of a doubt that in spite of the terrible tragedy and my involvement in it, I am innocent,” Harris once said. It was March of 1980 when Dr. Herman Tarnower, founder of the famous “Scarsdale diet,” was shot four times in the bedroom of his Purchase, N.Y., home. Harris and Tarnower had been lovers for years, but the doctor refused to marry her, and, in recent years, he’d been seen with a much younger woman. As the doctor lay dying in his bed, police spotted Harris driving away. She later told investigators: “I did it … I’ve been through so much hell with him. He slept with every woman he could.” A jury found her guilty of murdering Tarnower. At sentencing, she addressed the court, telling the judge, “I did not murder Dr. Tarnower. I loved him very much. No one in the world feels his loss more than I do. I’m not guilty.” The former head mistress of an exclusive girls’ school served a dozen years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Inside, she counseled female prisoners, organized the prison library and tutored inmates pursuing their high school degrees.

She was released from prison in 1993 when then-governor Mario Cuomo granted her clemency. Once free, Harris set up a foundation that raised millions of dollars for scholarships for children of women in prison in New York state and pushed her case that she did nothing wrong. “I think it’s very important to prove that. It’s important to me. It’s important to my family,” Harris said. Two movies were made about Harris and what she went through. She spent many of the later years living along a river in New Hampshire. The following is an excerpt from “The Art of Justice: An Eyewitness View of Thirty Infamous Trials,” by courtroom artist Marilyn Church and veteran CBS 2 reporter Lou Young: Often described as “prim,” Jean Harris was the most unlikely of murder defendants. Police first laid eyes on the slender, middle-aged, headmistress from a Virginia school for girls, driving away from Dr. Herman Tarnower’s home in upscale Westchester County, New York; She claimed she was going for help because the phone was dead. “There’s been a shooting,” she told arriving officers.

Inside the house they found Tarnower, the 69-year-old bachelor and author of “The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet” bleeding through his pajama tops from multiple bullet wounds. A recently fired .32 caliber revolver was in Harris’ glove compartment. The murder trial that followed was like looking inside a broken heart. It’s a story of love gone sour. The divorced Harris and Tarnower had been seeing each other for 14 years and in the winter of 1980 he was moving on to someone new, a lab assistant in her late 30’s. The cultured, class-conscious Harris apparently fell into full emotional collapse over the development. At trial she became a surrogate for every discarded wife, every ageing girlfriend, and every middle-aged woman who has watched her mate drift off into the orbit of a younger lover. The 57 year-old murder defendant found herself in the witness stand ten months after the shooting, offering a physically small presence as she explained her version of events: the tragic result, she said, of her decision to commit suicide and her former lover’s attempt to intervene.

She admitted, writing a long letter to Tarnower in which she referred to her rival as “a psychotic slut,” then making the five-hour drive up from Virginia with the loaded revolver in her purse. Her nocturnal visit to Tarnower’s home, she insisted, was intended to provide “a few quiet minutes with Hy,” before the end. She says she intended to leave then kill herself but claimed things changed when she found her rival’s negligee in the doctor’s bedroom. There was an argument, a struggle over the weapon as she tried first to put it to her head, then wrestled with Tarnower for it as it fired again and again. She even described a final conversation with her victim as she helped him to the bed telling him the phone she’d tried to use to call for help had gone dead. “You’re probably right,” she quoted him as saying then adding her own observation: “It was the only civil thing he said to me that night.” The doctor died from his wounds at a local hospital. There were nearly a hundred witnesses called in the case, but one in particular seemed to catch Harris in a lie. Juanita Edwards was an accidental witness to a telephone call Harris made to Tarnower the day he was killed.

A patient of the famous diet doctor, Edwards remembered overhearing parts of a heated exchange on a phone that had been left off the hook in an examining room. The faint voices, she said were clearly angry. She remembered references to lying and cheating and Tarnower demanding hours before his death “Goddamn it Jean, I want you to stop bothering me!” Harris said the phone call was to apologize for a letter she’d mailed to him and claimed the conversation ended with an invitation for her to come spend the weekend in Westchester that coming spring. So, something didn’t fit. Yes, Jean Harris claimed she still loved the diet doctor, and continued to harbor memories of his affections for her. In his closing argument defense lawyer Joel Aurnou quoted poetry of love lost and insisted convicting his client of murder would be a final insult to the victim. “Don’t say he died of as a result of homicidal rage, of some sordid affair,” he pleaded. “Restore the dignity of Dr. Tarnower, who died trying to save Jean Harris.” Aurnou’s own attempt to save Harris would ultimately fail because the jury didn’t buy it. Perhaps they remembered too well the closing argument of prosecutor George Bolen.

“Try pulling the trigger,” he suggested. “It has 14 pounds of pull. Just see how difficult it would be to pull double-action, four times by accident.” It was too difficult apparently. The jury deliberated eight days before marching into the courtroom in White Plains, New York chilling the defense table by staring straight ahead, refusing to look the correctly dressed defendant in the eyes. There were tears among the defense team and Jean Harris spoke softly to her attorney before being led away. “Joel,” she said I can’t sit in jail.” In the twelve years she spent in the New York State Prison system, Jean Harris wrote three books filed multiple appeals and survived two heart attacks. She spent most of that time at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, which is only a short drive from the scene of the crime. She was the quintessential model prisoner, working with the infant children of her fellow inmates and continued to gather supporters long after the publicity of the trial died away. She was freed after Governor Mario Cuomo commuted her sentence down to 15 years to life (from 25 to life) so she could become eligible for parole three years early.

Several clemency requests had been rejected, but the Governor finally relented after receiving a petition with thousands of signatures in a campaign lead by her two sons. There was increasing concern about her failing health. The day she resumed life as a free woman, she was recovering from coronary by-pass surgery. For the woman known back at the Madeira School for girls as “Integrity Jean,” it seemed fitting but still, somehow incomplete. She had testified years before that no one really knew her. “In Westchester,” she said I was a woman in a pretty dress going to dinner with Dr. Tarnower. In Washington, I was a woman in a pretty dress who was a headmistress. I was not sure who I was.” She thought some more and added, “I was a person sitting in an empty chair.” Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below … Jean Harris, 'Scarsdale Diet' doc killer, dies | Newsday Jean Harris, 'Scarsdale Diet' doc killer, dies Updated December 28, 2012 8:16 PM By NIRMAL MITRA.

Special to Newsday Reprints + - Jean Harris made national news in 1980 as the defendant in a high-profile murder case of her ex-lover Dr. Herman Tarnower, the well-known cardiologist and author of the best-selling book The Scarsdale Diet. She was convicted of second-degree murder. Photo Credit: Newsday File advertisement | advertise on newsday Jean Harris, the exclusive girls' school headmistress who spent 12 years in prison for the 1980 killing of "Scarsdale Diet" doctor Herman Tarnower, died in an assisted-living facility in New Haven, Conn., on Sunday. She was 89. Harris was arrested for fatally shooting the Westchester cardiologist, her longtime lover. The case , involving a love triangle, captivated the nation for more than a year, from Harris' arrest to her sentencing for second-degree murder on March 20, 1981. Most Popular 2 reportedly extricated from Tesla in crash She maintained the slaying was accidental and that she meant to shoot herself.

Her supporters saw Tarnower as an emotionally abusive bachelor who was having an affair with his office assistant, Lynne Tryforos, a woman half his age. After serving almost 12 years of a 15-year-to-life sentence, on Dec. 29, 1992, Harris was told that then-Gov. Mario Cuomo had granted her bid for clemency. Her doctors told her the news as she was being prepared for quadruple-bypass surgery following the second heart attack she had while being held at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Cuomo had rejected two previous bids for clemency. "She thought maybe someone had mixed up the message," Alice Lacey, head of the Jean Harris Defense Fund, told Newsday at the time of the surgery. "She had pretty much given up hope." advertisement | advertise on newsday Cuomo said in a statement that he granted Harris clemency because of her work on behalf of fellow inmates and their children. Harris, former headmistress of the Madeira School for Girls in McLean, Va., created an organization called the Bedford Hills Children's Foundation to aid in the education of prisoners' children.

Harris' murder case ignited a social debate over the status of women, with her defenders seeing her as symbolizing the plight of an aging and independent woman who was mistreated. The case inspired two made-for-television movies, "The People vs. Jean Harris," which aired not long after her 1981 conviction, and "Mrs. Harris," which ran on HBO in 2006. Tweets from @Newsday/newsday-staff Born Jean Struven on April 27, 1923, she grew up in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights , attended private schools, graduated magna cum laude from Smith College and married industrialist James Harris . The couple lived in Grosse Pointe, Mich. , and had two sons. She and Harris divorced in 1966. A few months later, she met Tarnower, 12 years her senior, at a party on Park Avenue in New York . Harris is survived by two sons, James and David; a sister, Mary Lynch; a brother, Robert Struven; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. With AP Mrs.

Harris (TV Movie 2005) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Based on the sensational 1980s media event, famed cardiologist Herman Tarnower meets a particularly brutal end at the hands of his jilted lover, Jean Harris. Director: a list of 32 titles created 24 Jan 2011 a list of 1547 titles created 22 Nov 2015 a list of 44 titles created 11 months ago a list of 45 titles created 7 months ago a list of 161 titles created 2 months ago Search for " Mrs. Harris " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Title: Mrs. Harris (TV Movie 2005) 6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 3 Golden Globes.

Another 6 wins & 32 nominations. See more awards » Photos Edit Storyline Fact-based story about Jean Harris (Annette Bening), a woman who was accused of murdering famed Scarsdale Diet Dr. Herman (Hi) Tarnower (Ben Kingsley) after being in a relationship with him for 14 years. Depicted as a womanizer, Dr. Tarnower had earlier asked Mrs. Harris, a divorced school teacher, to marry him. But when faced with upcoming nuptials, he backed out. The story depicts Mrs. Harris as a distraught and obsessive woman who may have been suffering from some mental illness and based on a note sent to the doctor, may have been suicidal at the time of the murder. She contended that Dr. Tarnower was shot while the two wrestled with a gun she was going to use to kill herself. Contains profanity and sexual situations, including implied masturbation. Written by John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net> She Loved Him, So She Shot Him. Genres: 25 February 2006 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know?

Trivia Ellen Burstyn , who appears in a minor role in this movie, played Jean Harris in The People vs. Jean Harris (1981). See more » Quotes Jean Harris : I realize that you are just a secretary and weren't as fortunate as I in graduating magna cum laude from Smith, but surely any well-read 10-year-old knows the meaning of the word "bizarre". Unique Style and Fresh take on the Stale "Bio-Pic" Genre... 25 January 2007 | by bdh18 (United States) – See all my reviews ...Kingsley and Bening's performances are stellar. Like the Film itself, their portrayal of the idiosyncratic/intellectual characters and script is amazing. I'm usually not very psyched to see a Bio-pic because a film's length cannot squeeze the complexities of a life and often only the really good or bad is portrayed, neither giving the full story. Mrs.Harris and "Hy" remind me of people from that niche of society I've known,especially in the way some intellectuals repress emotion w/logic.

While for the most part I respect people who process feelings before acting out, but like in the film, too much repressed emotion can be a ticking time-bomb. Props to the Film-makers and actors for an entertaining, unique,smart,& funny film that like most good/great films get better upon each viewing as details,layers are revealed. I'd recommend to those who seen it once, or didn't watch the film in its entirety to hold judgement until the 2nd viewing. The film is well cast down to the smallest roles. And while Ellen Burstyn is a great actress(she played role of Mrs Harris in made-for-TV film soon after actual events in the early 80's)its amazing that she was nominated for an Emmy for her 15 seconds of screen time(she plays an ex-lover of Hy's that is being interviewed in a sort of "mock"umentary w/different characters who know the main characters in some way that threads its way throughout the film. The main plot is told through flashbacks from the trial of Mrs.Harris). It makes me wonder if whomever votes for the Emmy's owed her something, or it was pay-back for a past snubbing?

While her 15seconds are solid, after seeing it three times I don't see them as worthy of an award or any more recognition than any of the other small roles(Brett Butler,Phillip Baker Hall, and Mary McDonald also give good short performances in the mock-doc thread)?? IMO ALL awards for art are irrelevant anyway(in comparing arts quality) because art is a subjective medium thats quality(sans technical proficiencies)and comparisons are up to an individuals personal taste and preference. Award shows are really just vehicles to promote stars, films, and the industries as a whole(music and/or Film). I'm not naive to the awards relevance and value to the individuals nominated or those involved w/a nominated project. Obviously the Financial gains and opportunity from the exposure and critical recognition is very important to an industry thats goal is to attract as many customers as possible(errr business). Too often people begin to believe that awards are fact,or a true gauge. Like a sporting competition. I've heard competent adults say things like..."that film should've won best picture because it was BETTER than that film..."??). As a dark comedy Mrs Harris IMO is an excellent film, thats characters and script resinate later.

I've laughed several times upon remembering certain lines by Bening and Kingsley. Kinglsey's portrayal of "Hy's" laugh is Hysterical 9 of 16 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Jean Harris, 'Scarsdale Diet' Killer and Cultural Flashpoint, Dies at 89 | Hollywood Reporter Jean Harris, 'Scarsdale Diet' Killer and Cultural Flashpoint, Dies at 89 11:17 AM PST 12/29/2012 by Jordan Zakarin COMMENTS A school headmistress who was convicted in 1981 of killing her famed dietician boyfriend, she was portrayed in several awards-nominated TV movies. Jean Harris, whose 1981 trial for murdering her famed cardiologist boyfriend captivated the nation and inspired several telefilms, died on Sunday at the age of 89. Harris' legal saga lasted an entire year, from March 1980 to 1981. A headmistress at a private school in Virgina, she was the long-time girlfriend of Dr.

Herman Tarnower, a well-known physician who popularized the "Scarsdale Diet," and was charged with killing him after an altercation over one of his long-term lovers, of which he allegedly had many. PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2012 The trial, during which Harris claimed she accidentally shot Tarnower as they wrestled over a gun, captivated the nation. She became a symbol for repressed women, and after she was convicted, she worked to better the conditions of women in prison, an effort that included creating a daycare to children born to imprisoned mothers. She also helped imprisoned women work toward college educations and GEDs. Sentenced to 15 years to life in 1981, she was granted clemency by New York Governor Mario Cuomo in 1993. Hollywood grabbed on to the national event; the telefilm The People vs. Jean Harris, a two-part, four hour film , premiered in 1981, and earned star Ellen Burstyn both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her turn in the title role.

Bustyn also appeared in a brief cameo in a 2005 HBO film about Harris and Tarnower's relationship, called Mrs. Harris, and earned another Emmy nod for her role as one of Tarnower's past lovers. Annette Bening, who played Harris in that film, earned both Emmy and Golden Globe nods, as did Ben Kingsley, who played Tarnower.

Question: Doctor Herman Tarnower was responsible for which well known diet
Answer: The Scarsdale Diet