Fictional Fling With Diana Stirs Up Brits

When Peter Lefcourt sat down in Los Angeles last Saturday to discuss his new novel, he had no idea that the book was about to kick up a front-page storm in Britain.

The next day’s Sunday Express screamed: “ ‘MY AFFAIR WITH DIANA’ BOOK ROW.” Romance novelist Barbara Cartland, a step-grandmother to Princess Diana, told the London tabloid that Lefcourt’s “Di and I” should be banned, saying, “It’s appalling that Diana can be used to sell fiction like this.”

Reuters picked up the story and exported it to the United States, so Memorial Day newspapers and newscasts also described the fictionalized account of a love affair with the princess.

But here’s the thing: “Di and I,” published in this country by Random House, is not trash. Lefcourt, a seasoned screenwriter who won an Emmy in 1985 for his work on “Cagney and Lacey,” is also one of those serious novelists. Two years after publication of “The Dreyfus Affair,” his well-received tale of two major-league baseball players who fall in love (with each other), his wildly improbable “Di and I” has enough page-turning hilarity and romance to make it a worthy candidate for beach reading.

Little in this week’s news stories indicated that Cartland or the other quoted detractors had read the book--or could have read it, seeing that the novel has yet to go on sale in Britain.

“Di and I” works like this: Embittered screenwriter Leonard Schecter, a Hollywood deal and divorce papers in hand, arrives in London to prepare a TV mini-series about Diana. He manages to grab a dance with her at a Togolese Embassy party, they click, and a Fleet Street reporter helps put him in further contact. Clandestine meetings lead to a sexually rich romance, and a bold escape from royal boredom, before Leonard and Di settle down and open up a McDonald’s franchise in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

In this Cinderella story in reverse, Barbara Walters, Ross Perot and King Juan Carlos are among the other brand names who turn up. Diana is portrayed as appealingly sweet and fragile, an innocent who finds love outside her painfully loveless marriage.

“My reaction is that it’s really irrelevant for Cartland to comment without first reading the book,” Lefcourt said Tuesday. “The book is meant to be romantic and sweet, and I think that Diana herself would be pleased.”

Lefcourt, 52, a soft-spoken New York native who worked among the Togolese during a stint in the Peace Corps, first came to Los Angeles in 1972. He had managed to sell a script for a murder mystery to Universal. “Here I was, in L.A., in my corduroy jacket looking at Porsches,” he recalled. The movie was not made, but by 1975 Lefcourt was writing for TV’s “Eight Is Enough.”

Certainly, this week’s publicity in Britain should sell books. The sparks should also light--or maybe scorch--the path for Lefcourt when he visits Britain to promote “Di and I” on June 19. Random House launched the book in the United States with a first printing of 25,000 copies.

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Book Talk: Visitors to the American Booksellers Assn.’s annual convention left Los Angeles on Tuesday with piles of books, catalogues, T-shirts and publishing tales such as these:

* The next headache for President Clinton may come in the form of Bob Woodward’s “The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House.” Woodward’s view at the top was described by one who has read the book as unflattering when it comes to Clinton’s decision-making skills. Simon & Schuster plans to put the book on sale immediately after “60 Minutes” offers a first peek on Sunday.

* Chuck Hogan, a young writer who has been supporting himself by working in a Boston video store, scored a $500,000-plus contract from Doubleday for his first novel. Film rights are now in play for “The Standoff,” praised by Doubleday Publisher Stephen Rubin as “pure action, a thriller about a hostage negotiator who has to deal with a white supremacist in Idaho.”

* Random House has ambitious plans for the October publication of Marlon Brando’s long-awaited autobiography. “Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me,” which includes as many as 100 photos from the actor’s collection, will be advertised extensively to support an anticipated print run of 500,000 copies. But whether the enigmatic--and reclusive--Brando will step forward to support his own cause on the chat circuit appears doubtful. Random House Publisher Harold Evans said Brando has agreed to answer prepared questions in front of a camera--and this video would then be made available to interested media. Meanwhile, Hyperion intends to publish Peter Manso’s unauthorized bio of Brando, a book Evans called “a spoiling operation.”

* Barbara Bush said she felt “kind of guilty hiding behind the dog” when she wrote the canine chronicle “Millie’s Book” (and Millie, by the way, is “absolutely wonderful, a great companion still”). But when the former First Lady’s autobiography is published by Scribners at summer’s end, she will be out on her own, with everyone from Barbara Walters to--yes--David Letterman planning to catch up with her life outside the White House. Bush presented an overview of her memoir at an afternoon tea in Beverly Hills and boasted that she wrote every word on a laptop computer.

* TV writer-producer Stephen J. Cannell visited William Morrow & Co.’s convention booth on Saturday, even though his first novel is a year from publication. Morrow recently announced that it had acquired Cannell’s “The Plan,” a political thriller.