Lit eZine Vol 6 | p-16 | A WRITER’S LIFE | Sidney Sheldon

A WRITER’S LIFE

SIDNEY SHELDON

Sidney Sheldon (February 11, 1917 – January 30, 2007) was an American writer born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago, Illinois. His prominent works include Broadway plays, motion pictures, television series and several best-selling romantic suspense novels.

He began writing as a youngster and worked at many jobs while in University, where he contributed short plays to drama groups. At age seventeen, he found a job as a reader of prospective film material at Universal Pictures in Hollywood. During that time he began wiring screenplays.

He served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he became a prolific and popular writer and won several awards for his work. In 1944, he had three hit musicals running simultaneously on Broadway: the revival of The Merry Widow, Jackpot and Dream With Music.

In the early 1960s, he switched to television and produced the popular series “The Patty Duke Show” and “I Dream of Jeannie”. In the last year of the series “I Dream of Jeannie,” he wrote his first novel “The Naked Face,” which was not a hit with the book reviewers but sold 21,000 copies in hardcover and 3.1 million copies in paperback.  

After this, he wrote several other bestsellers that include  “Rage of Angels,” “The Other Side of Midnight,” “Master of the Game”, “Windmills of the Gods” and “If Tomorrow Comes”.

In an interview Sheldon said; “I try to write my books so the reader can’t put them down. I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It’s the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter.”

His awards include Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1947, Writers Guild Awards-Musical in 1949 and 1951, and nominations for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy in 1967 and Writers Guild Awards-Musical in 1963

Having sold more than 300 million copies, nearly every one of his novels has been adapted into either a big-screen feature or a TV miniseries.

In a very interesting interview posted on YouTube, The Writer Speaks: Sidney Sheldon, you can hear what this immensely popular writer has to say.

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