Nothing Lasts Forever

It’s funny what you can learn about a famous person only after he or she dies. Take, for instance, writer Sidney Sheldon, who passed away this afternoon, at age 89, of complications from pneumonia.

My only knowledge of Sheldon until today was that he’d produced a series of thrillers, all of them fronted by slinky, reclining young women clad in provocative attire. (This is a good example.) However, he also wrote Broadway musicals and the Shirley Temple-Cary Grant film, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), the latter of which won him an Academy Award. And he claimed to have penned “almost every single episode” of The Patty Duke Show (1963-1966). He went on to create an even better-remembered TV series, I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970). In addition, Sheldon created and then wrote episodes of Hart to Hart (1979-1984). It wasn’t until age 50 that he turned to composing novels, soon becoming a bestseller, with several of his books being adapted for screens large and small (including Bloodline, Master of the Game, and Memories of Midnight). Oh, and did I mention that his very first novel, The Naked Face (1970), won him an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America?

Sheldon packed a lot of successes into 89 years. Would that we could all be so productive.

READ MORE: “Sidney Sheldon, 89; Master of Flashy, Trashy Bestsellers,” by Bettijane Levine and Valerie J. Nelson (Los Angeles Times); “Obituary: Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007),” by Steve Lewis (Mystery*File).