Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night is a Golden Globe nominated CBS television film starring Susan Dey as an abusive mother. The film, which aired in October 1977, was written and produced by Joanna Lee and featured a supporting cast including Rhea Perlman, Kevin McCarthy and Natasha Ryan as Mary Jane Harper.[1]

A novelization of the film, packaged and by-lined to give the impression of being the story source, was published by Signet Books shortly after the film aired, to capitalize on its ratings impact. (There is no record of the book having ever existed prior to this paperback edition.) The stated authorship is shared by Joanna Lee and [in smaller print] T.S. Cook. Given that the book is a tie-in created after-the-fact, what the by-line implies, but avoids particularizing, is that Cook actually wrote the novel based on Lee's teleplay. As Cook would himself soon emerge as an award-winning screenwriter (The China Syndrome), it's likely that Lee and he were colleagues, and that he took the assignment at her behest. In media tie-in terms, an adaptation presented in this manner is called an "implied novelization."

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