Sidney Sheldon


Sidney Sheldon was an American writer, director and producer.
Sheldon was prominent in the 1930s, first working on Broadway plays and then in motion pictures, notably writing the successful comedy The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer which earned him an Oscar in 1948. He went on to work in television, where his works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart. After turning 50, he began writing best-selling romantic suspense novels, such as Master of the Game, The Other Side of Midnight and Rage of Angels. His 18 novels have sold over 300 million copies in 51 languages. Sheldon is consistently cited as one of the top ten best selling fiction writers of all time.

Early life

Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois. His parents, of Russian Jewish ancestry, were Ascher "Otto" Schechtel, manager of a jewelry store, and Natalie Marcus. At 10, Sidney made his first sale, US$5 for a poem. During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, and after graduating from East High School, he attended Northwestern University on a scholarship and contributed short plays to drama groups. He had to drop out after six months during the Depression era to help support his family. Sheldon enlisted in the military during World War II as a pilot in the War Training Service, a branch of the Army Air Corps, His unit was disbanded, but he was discharged because of a recurring slipped disc and before he was deployed.

Career

In 1937, Sheldon moved to Hollywood, California, where he reviewed scripts and collaborated on a number of B movies.

Broadway

Sheldon began writing musicals for the Broadway stage while continuing to write screenplays for both MGM Studios and Paramount Pictures. He earned a reputation as a prolific writer; for example, at one time he had three musicals on Broadway: a rewritten The Merry Widow, Jackpot, and Dream with Music. Sheldon received a Tony Award in 1959 for his musical Redhead, starring Gwen Verdon. Other stage plays of Sidney Sheldon include " Alice in Arms", "The King of New York", "The Judge", and "Roman Candle". Only "Roman Candle" has been published as a book. The play "Gomes" was performed only in London and not in Broadway

Film

Sheldon's success on Broadway brought him back to Hollywood where his first assignment was The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1947. He was one of the writers on the screenplay for the 1948 musical film Easter Parade and sole writer for the 1950 musical film Annie Get Your Gun, both of which featured the songs of Irving Berlin.. Other writing credits inlcude "South of Panama", "Gambling Daughters", "Dangerous Lady", "Borrowed Hero", "Mr. District Attorney in the Carter Case", Fly-by-Night", "She's in the Army", Nancy Goes to Rio", "Three Guys Named Mike", "No Questions Asked", "Rich, Young and Pretty", "Just This Once", "Remains to be Seen", "Dream Wife", "You're Never Too Young", "The Birds and the Bees", "Anything Goes", "Pardners", "The Buster Keaton Story", "All in a Night's Work" and "Billy Rose's Jumbo".

Television

When television became the new popular medium, Sheldon decided to try his hand in it. "I suppose I needed money," he remembered. "I met Patty Duke one day at lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show, and I did something nobody else in TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series."
After seeing Duke's performance as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, Sheldon had the idea to cast the actress as the two sitcom leads: identical cousins, Patty and Cathy Lane.
In 1965, Sheldon created, produced and wrote I Dream of Jeannie starring Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman. He wrote all but two dozen scripts in five years, sometimes using three pseudonyms while simultaneously writing scripts for The Patty Duke Show. He later admitted that he did this because he felt his name was appearing too often in the credits as creator, producer, copyright owner and writer of these series.
Production for I Dream of Jeannie ended in 1970 after five seasons. It was "During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie, I decided to try a novel," he said in 1982. "Each morning from 9 until noon, I had a secretary at the studio take all calls. I mean every single call. I wrote each morning — or rather, dictated — and then I faced the TV business."
In 1970, Sheldon wrote all seventeen episodes of the short-lived series Nancy.
In 1979, Sheldon created and wrote for the series Hart to Hart starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers. The show aired on ABC and ran for five seasons.

Novels

In 1969, Sheldon wrote his first novel, The Naked Face, which earned him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category of Best First Novel. His next novel, The Other Side of Midnight, climbed to #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list as did several ensuing novels, a number of which were also made into motion pictures or TV miniseries. His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men. The novels contained a lot of suspense and devices to keep the reader turning the page:
Most of his readers were women. Asked why this was the case he said: "I like to write about women who are talented and capable, but most important, retain their femininity. Women have tremendous power — their femininity, because men can't do without it." Books were Sheldon's favorite medium. "I love writing books," he commented. "Movies are a collaborative medium, and everyone is second-guessing you. When you do a novel you're on your own. It's a freedom that doesn't exist in any other medium." He was the author of 18 novels which have sold over 300 million copies.
Three years before his death, The Los Angeles Times called Sheldon "Mr. Blockbuster" and "prince of potboilers."

North Korea

Despite generally limited access to foreign literature, it has been reported that members of North Korea's small English-speaking elite are familiar with Sheldon's work.

Personal life

Sheldon was first married to Jane Kaufman Harding. Later he wrote "Regretfully, in less than a month, Jane and I realized we had made a mistake.... We spent the next nine months trying in vain to make the marriage work."
He was married for 30 years to Jorja Curtright, a stage and film actress who later became an interior designer. She played Suzanne in the 1955 film, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, and appeared in a Season One episode of I Dream of Jeannie as Madame Zolta. Curtright died of a heart attack in 1985. Their daughter, Mary Sheldon, became a novelist as well.
Sheldon married Alexandra Joyce Kostoff, a former child actress in Las Vegas in 1989.
Sheldon struggled with bipolar disorder for years; he contemplated suicide at 17, as detailed in his autobiography published in 2005, The Other Side of Me.

Death

A resident of Palm Springs, California, Sheldon died on January 30, 2007 of pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California, 12 days before his 90th birthday. His remains were cremated, the ashes interred in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Awards

Sheldon won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom. Sheldon was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1988 had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in 1994.

Series

Midnight
  1. The Other Side of Midnight
  2. Memories of Midnight
Ambitious Women
Children's Books
The Adventures of Drippy the Runaway Raindrop
The Chase
The Dictator
Ghost Story
The Money Tree
Revenge!
The Strangler
The Twelve Commandments
The Adventure of a Quarter
Sidney Sheldon Books by Tilly Bagshawe
Mistress of the Game. A Sequel to Master of the Game
After the Darkness
Angel of the Dark
The Tides of Memory
Chasing Tomorrow First sequel to If Tomorrow Comes
Reckless Second sequel to If Tomorrow Comes
The Silent Widow
The Phoenix

Films as writer