Sidney Sheldon 1917-2007

Author, after screen career, dies at age 89.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 31, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Sidney Sheldon, who won awards in three careers - Broadway theater, movies and television - then at age 50 turned to writing bestselling novels about stalwart women who triumph in a hostile world of ruthless men, has died. He was 89.

Sheldon died Tuesday afternoon of complications from pneumonia at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, said Warren Cowan, his publicist. His wife, Alexandra, and his daughter, author Mary Sheldon, were by his side.

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 designed to keep the reader turning pages.

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 Feb. 17, 1917.

During World War II, he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps. In the New York theater 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. Broadway success brought him back to Hollywood.

His first assignment, The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer, brought him the Academy Award for best original screenplay of 1947.

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. ... For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode."

I Dream of Jeannie, which he also created and produced, lasted five seasons, 1965-1970. "During the last year of I Dream of Jeannie, I decided to try a novel," he said in 1982.

Thereafter Sheldon became a habitue of bestseller lists.

Sheldon was married for more than 30 years to Jorja Curtright Sheldon. She died in 1985. He married Alexandra Kostoff in 1989.

[Last modified January 31, 2007, 05:58:23]