Sidney Sheldon dies
2007-01-31 07:29
Los Angeles - Sidney Sheldon, who won awards in three careers - Broadway theatre, movies and television - then at age 50 turned to writing best-selling novels about stalwart women who triumph in a hostile world of ruthless men, has died. He was 89.
Sheldon died on Tuesday afternoon of complications from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Centrein Rancho Mirage, said Warren Cowan, his publicist. His wife, Alexandra, and his daughter, author Mary Sheldon, were by his side.
"I've lost a longtime and dear friend," Cowan said. "In all my years in this business, I've never heard an unkind word said about him."
Sheldon's books, with titles such as Rage of Angels, The Other Side of Midnight, Master of the Game and If Tomorrow Comes, provided his greatest fame. They were cleverly plotted, with a high degree of suspense and sensuality and a device to keep the reader turning pages.
"I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down," he explained in a 1982 interview. "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."
'Women have tremendous power...'
Analysing why so many women bought his books, he commented: "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."
Sheldon was obviously not aiming at highbrow critics, whose reviews of his books were generally disparaging. He remained undeterred, promoting the novels and himself with genial fervour. A big, cheerful man, he bragged about his work habits.
Unlike other novelists who toiled over typewriters or computers, he dictated 50 pages a day to a secretary or a tape machine. He corrected the pages the following day, continuing the routine until he had 1 200 to 1 500 pages.
"Then I do a complete rewrite- 12 to 15 times," he said. "I spend a whole year rewriting."
Several of his novels became television miniseries, often with the author as producer.
Sheldon began writing as a youngster in Chicago, where he was born on February 17, 1917. At 10, he made his first sale: $10 for a poem. During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs, attended Northwestern University and contributed short plays to drama groups.
At 17, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood. The only job he could find was as a reader of prospective film material at Universal Studio for $22 a week. At night he wrote his own screenplays and sold one, South of Panama, to the studio for $250.
'I worked like hell and I never stopped'
During World War II, he served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. In the New York theatre after the war he established his reputation as a prolific writer. At one time he had three musicals on Broadway: a rewritten The Merry Widow, Jackpot and Dream with Music. He received a Tony award as one of the writers of the Gwen Verdon hit Redhead. His Broadway success brought about his return to Hollywood.
His first assignment, The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer, starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple, brought him the Academy Award for best original screenplay of 1947.
While under contract to MGM, he recalled in 1982, "I worked like hell and I never stopped. Dore Schary (then production head) one day looked at a list of MGM projects. I had written eight of them, more than three other writers put together. That afternoon, he made me a producer."
With the movie business hurting because of television's popularity, Sheldon decided to try the new medium.
"I suppose I needed money," he remembered. "I met Patty Duke one day at lunch. So I produced The Patty Duke Show (in which she played two cousins), and I did something nobody else in TV ever did. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series."
Another series, Nancy, lasted only a half-season, but I Dream of Jeannie, which he also created and produced, lasted five seasons, 1965-1970. The show concerned an astronaut, Larry Hagman, who lands on a desert island and discovers a bottle containing a beautiful, 2 000-year-old genie, played by Barbara Eden. She accompanies him back to Florida and eventually marries her.
Sheldon was married for more than 30 years to Jorja Curtright Sheldon, a stage and film actress who later became a prominent interior decorator. She died in 1985.
He married Alexandra Kostoff, a former child actress and advertising executive, in 1989.
Along with his wife and daughter, survivors include his brother Richard, two grandchildren and other family members.
Private funeral services were pending.
- AP