LATOW, (Muriel) Roberta 1931-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 27, 1931, in Springfield, MA; died of cancer February 4, 2003, in Oxford, England. Art dealer, interior designer, and author. Latow had an early interest in art, and left her conservative, small-town life in Massachusetts to study interior design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. She then worked as an interior designer in Manhattan and became friends with many prominent abstract and pop artists of the time, including Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol; many, in fact, credit her with giving Warhol the idea to paint his famous soup cans. Encouraged by her friends, she opened an art gallery in 1960 but had to close it in 1966 because of competition from more established galleries. She then found employment with the Brooklyn Museum, which sent her on art-hunting expeditions in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. She enjoyed this work and international travel until she retired from it in 1981 to write erotic romance novels and continue her work as an interior designer. Latow's novels became popular for their descriptive details of far-off places with which the author was very familiar, as well as for their erotic interludes; the stories were often drawn from her personal experiences and then embellished. Over a period of about two decades she completed twenty-two novels, including Three Rivers (1981), Cheyney Fox (1991), Love Chooses (1993), Hungry Heart (1994), Forbidden (1995), Objects of Desire (1995), Embrace Me (1999), and Take Me Higher (c. 2000).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), February 21, 2003, p. 39.