Sidney Sheldon (1917 to 2007) was an American novelist, screenwriter and television producer. After winning an Academy Award in Hollywood and creating the sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie”, he turned to fiction in his fifties and wrote 18 novels, which have sold more than 300 million copies.
He was born Sidney Schechtel in Chicago on 11 February 1917. He went to Northwestern University on a scholarship but dropped out after six months to help support his family, and in 1937 he moved to Hollywood, where he reviewed scripts and worked on B movies. He went on to write musicals for Broadway, winning a Tony Award in 1959 for “Redhead”. His screenplay for “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer” (1947) won the Academy Award, and he also wrote the film musical “Annie Get Your Gun” (1950).
In television Sheldon created “The Patty Duke Show”, “I Dream of Jeannie”, which ran from 1965 to 1970, and later “Hart to Hart” (1979). During the last year of “I Dream of Jeannie” he began dictating a novel each morning before starting work at the studio. The result, “The Naked Face” (1970), was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel.
His second novel, “The Other Side of Midnight” (1973), reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list and was filmed in 1977; he returned to its characters in “Memories of Midnight” (1990). His books often feature determined women who persevere in a world run by hostile men. “Master of the Game” (1982) follows four generations of the Blackwell family, and “If Tomorrow Comes” (1985) is about a woman framed by the Mafia who takes her revenge and becomes a con artist. Both were adapted as television miniseries, as were “Rage of Angels” and “Windmills of the Gods”.
Sheldon’s last novel was “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (2004), followed by a memoir, “The Other Side of Me” (2005). He died of pneumonia in Rancho Mirage, California, on 30 January 2007. Since 2009 the British author Tilly Bagshawe has written eight novels published under the Sidney Sheldon name. They include “Mistress of the Game”, a sequel to “Master of the Game”, and two sequels to “If Tomorrow Comes”, “Chasing Tomorrow” and “Reckless”.
