In 1951, Sidney Sheldon was asked to write the musical, Rich, Young And Pretty, a property for, amongst others, Jane Powell. In the raw material, Sheldon recognized, "a story that had to keep moving quickly and required a light touch." That pretty much describes everything Sheldon has penned since, including his memoir, The Other Side of Me, now available in paperback.
Sheldon was born in Chicago some 89 years ago. His was a Depression era childhood, the penury of the times uprooting the family frequently and creating much friction between his parents.
Still, in an arc borrowed from Horatio Alger, Sheldon overcame circumstance and, by the tender age of 27, was the author of no less than three Broadway shows, 2 hits and a flop. It was an average good enough to get him to Hollywood (he'd had an unsuccessful try at it there as an even younger man), where he became the surprise winner of the Best Screenplay Oscar, at 30, for the Cary Grant-Myrna Loy comedy, The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer.
After the failures of a second Grant vehicle, Dream Wife, and The Buster Keaton Story, Sheldon was all but through in Tinseltown. He returned to Broadway, and won a Tony for the Bob Fosse-Gwen Verdon project Redhead. The theatre again proved a springboard, this time, though, to television, where his name, now under the hyphen writer-producer-director, appeared on small screen sixties staples such as The Patty Duke Show and I Dream of Jeanie. Residuals cheques from those shows continue to roll in - but they're marble-sized potatoes compared to the fortune Sheldon has amassed in his third career, that of pulp novelist. According to Guinness, Sheldon is the world's most translated author, having sold over 300 million books.
His latest, this memoir, is, predictably, a swift and soapy read; Sheldon writes in a plain and pace-happy style - call it "page-turnerese." And while he's not above providing the juicier details of his colleagues' backgrounds, this is a clean conscience at work; the expulsion of any skeletons from closets is a gesture made strictly in the interest of literary momentum. Sheldon is not out to taint careers (most of the dirt, in fact, made its way out of the confessional long ago) - he is out to make you finish the book by the time your flight lands.
If he treads heavily anywhere it on is the ground of his own soul, going public for the first time about his long battle with manic depression. Despite a hale history of successes, Sheldon is no stranger to bouts of suicidal instinct (one wonders if he ever considered jumping off a stack of his own books.) These days, he claims, he is more often than not at his best behaved.
The book, then, offers a little something for everyone: classic film nuts will appreciate Sheldon's anecdotes about his adventures in the film trade; avid readers of such novels as The Other Side of Midnight and Rage of Angels will find touches of the pulp glitz and mini-series fodder that have made Sheldon a household name; and those looking for a die-hard confessional might take interest in the running thread on Sheldon's monogrammed demons.
Nevertheless, " a little something", even a collection of "little somethings", does not a thing of substance make - exactly what you figure when a jacket reads, "by Sidney Sheldon."
