Sidney Sheldon

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Lore & Background

Sheldon was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois, to parents of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. At age 10, he made his first sale, $5 for a poem. During the Great Depression, he worked a variety of jobs, and after graduating from East High School in Denver, Colorado, he attended Northwestern University on a scholarship, but had to drop out after six months to help support his family. He 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, and he was discharged because of a recurring slipped disc before he was deployed. In 1937, Sheldon moved to Hollywood, where he reviewed scripts and collaborated on B movies. He began writing musicals for Broadway while continuing to write screenplays for MGM and Paramount. He earned a Tony Award in 1959 for his musical Redhead, starring Gwen Verdon. His film work included the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and sole writing credit for the 1950 musical film Annie Get Your Gun. In television, he created, produced, and wrote The Patty Duke Show, I Dream of Jeannie, and Hart to Hart. He wrote almost every episode of The Patty Duke Show for seven years, and all but two dozen scripts for I Dream of Jeannie in five years, sometimes using pseudonyms Mark Rowane, Allan Devon, and Christopher Golato. After turning 50, Sheldon wrote his first novel, The Naked Face (1970), which earned him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel. His next novel, The Other Side of Midnight (1973), climbed to number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, as did several ensuing novels. He authored 18 novels, which have sold over 300 million copies. He was first married to Jane Kaufman Harding (1945–1946), then for 30 years to Jorja Curtright, a stage and film actress who died of a heart attack in 1985, and later married Alexandra Joyce Kostoff in 1989. Sheldon struggled with bipolar disorder and contemplated suicide at 17, as detailed in his 2005 autobiography The Other Side of Me.

Reader's Guide

Sidney Sheldon's significance lies in his extraordinary versatility across multiple entertainment media, achieving success in Broadway, film, television, and novels. He won an Academy Award for his screenplay The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and a Tony Award in 1959 for the musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie. His television creations—The Patty Duke Show (1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70), and Hart to Hart (1979–84)—became cultural touchstones. However, his greatest commercial impact came from his novels, which sold over 300 million copies worldwide in 51 languages, making him one of the top 10 best-selling fiction writers of all time. His novels often featured determined women who persevere in a tough world run by hostile men, and he employed cliffhanger techniques: 'I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of it, he or she has to read just one more chapter.' Sheldon's legacy is that of a prolific storyteller who mastered each medium he entered, leaving a vast body of work that entertained millions.

Did You Know?

• At age 10, Sheldon made his first sale, $5 for a poem.
• He wrote almost every episode of The Patty Duke Show for seven years, something he said nobody else in TV ever did.
• For I Dream of Jeannie, he wrote all but two dozen scripts in five years, sometimes using three pseudonyms: Mark Rowane, Allan Devon, and Christopher Golato.
• Sheldon's first novel, The Naked Face (1970), earned him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel.
• He struggled with bipolar disorder and contemplated suicide at 17, talked out of it by his father who found him with a bottle of whiskey and several bottles of sleeping pills.