Sidney Sheldon

Biography

Having spent a year on active service in the US Airforce (1941), Sheldon began writing ‘B’ movies with collaborator, Ben Roberts. His first screen-writing credit came in 1941, with the film 'Mr. District Attorney' and the 'Carter Case', although it was in scripting musicals that he found his first measure of success.

In 1948, Sheldon won an Academy Award for his script to the Cary Grant vehicle, 'The Bachelor and Bobby Soxer', as well as a Screen Writers’ Guild Award for Best Musical, for 'Easter Parade', starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. In 1953, he made his directorial debut with 'Dream Wife'. However, his efforts as a director and producer rarely matched his accomplishments as a scriptwriter, and later as a novelist.

In 1959 he won a Tony Award for the Best Musical with 'Redhead', as well as becoming an extraordinarily prolific scriptwriter for such shows as 'I Dream of Jeannie' and 'Patty Duke'. Sheldon’s first novel, 'The Naked Face', was described by the New York Times as “the best first mystery of the year”, and was the first in a seemingly endless production of bestsellers, including 'The Other Side of Midnight' (1974) and 'The Best Laid Plans'(1997).

Sheldon died from complications relating to pneumonia in 2007, leaving a wife, Alexandra Kost off, and a daughter, Mary. His publishers, William Morris, estimate that there are some 275 million copies of his books in circulation across the globe.

Novels

· The Other Side of Midnight (1973)

· A Stranger in the Mirror (1976)

· Bloodline (1977)

· Rage of Angels (1980)

· Master of the Game (1982)

· If Tomorrow Comes (1985)

· Windmills of the Gods (1987)

· The Sands of Time (1988)

· Memories of Midnight (1990)

· The Doomsday Conspiracy (1991)

· The Stars Shine Down (1992)

· Nothing Lasts Forever (1994)

· Morning, Noon and Night (1995)

· The Best Laid Plans (1997)

· Tell Me Your Dreams (1998)

· The Sky Is Falling (2001)

· Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004)

Interesting facts

. He enjoys travelling the world (traveled 90 countries) and consistently argued: «If I have the book describes the Indonesian dish, it means that I ate it». It is often asked, do not bother him that most of his readers are women. Not at all. «I want to dispel the myth of the „dumb blonde“. My heroine is a strong and beautiful person. They reflect my personal experience: such were my mother, parting children in the years of the great depression who worked until eighth decade, and my late wife Jorge, and my second husband, Alexander. All of them are intelligent, motivated, creative people. And these qualities coexist in any way not at the expense of femininity.»

. Readers threw Sheldon requirements change the fates of the heroes, and he did not refuse them the right to the happy circumstances. In the novel «the Wrath of angels» one of the characters is a little boy dies. After a pile of letters from a sorry fans Sheldon changed the scenario of food cooking miniseries do: the child was alive, the ladies happy.

. With the first wife, Jorge Cartwright Sheldon, he lived in married for 30 years until her death in 1985. In 1989 he married Alexandra Kostoff. His only child is a daughter, Mary Sheldon.

Awards

Sheldon won an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay (1947) for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award (1959) for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom. Sheldon had a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars dedicated to him in 1994.