Sidney Sheldon, Author of Steamy Novels, Dies at 89

Sidney Sheldon, an Oscar- and Tony-winning writer of squeaky-clean fare for stage and screen who became world famous for his later career as a writer of steamy, best-selling novels, died on Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 89 and had homes in Malibu and Palm Springs, Calif.

Joe Tabacca/Associated Press

Sidney Sheldon.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his publicist, Warren Cowan, said yesterday.

The elder statesman of commercial fiction, Mr. Sheldon wrote more than two dozen novels, which for the last three and half decades have been mainstays of airports, drugstores and bedside tables around the globe. His books have sold more than 300 million copies, Variety reported last year. In the same issue, Variety estimated Mr. Sheldon’s net worth, including his earnings from his film and television ventures, at $3 billion.

Mr. Sheldon’s books have been published in 51 languages, making him, by many accounts, the most widely translated author in the world. His best-known titles, all published by William Morrow, include “The Other Side of Midnight” (1974); “A Stranger in the Mirror” (1976); “Master of the Game” (1982); “If Tomorrow Comes” (1985); and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” (2004).

Several of Mr. Sheldon’s books became television miniseries, among them “Rage of Angels” (broadcast in 1983), “Memories of Midnight” (1991) and “The Sands of Time” (1992). “The Other Side of Midnight” was made into a 1977 feature film starring Marie-France Pisier, John Beck and Susan Sarandon.

Though nearly everyone knows of Mr. Sheldon’s literary life, fewer know of his early background, which had all the drama of one of his novels. There was the impoverished childhood followed by success in Hollywood. (Mr. Sheldon won an Oscar for best screenplay for the 1947 film “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” starring Cary Grant,Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple.)

There were the triumphs on Broadway, culminating, in 1959, with a shared Tony Award for best musical for “Redhead,” starring Gwen Verdon.

There were his years as a television writer, notably for “The Patty Duke Show”; “I Dream of Jeannie,” which Mr. Sheldon also produced; and “Hart to Hart,” which he created.

And there was his lifelong battle with manic depression, which Mr. Sheldon recounted candidly in his memoir, “The Other Side of Me” (Warner Books), published in 2005.

At his best, Mr. Sheldon was considered a master storyteller whose novels were known for their meticulous research, swift pacing, lush settings and cliffhanging chapters.

Working in the office of his Palm Springs compound, he composed his books orally, dictating page after page — as many as 50 a day — to his secretary. Like traditional oral epic, Mr. Sheldon’s work depended crucially on formulaic construction, relying on stock characters and narrative boilerplate to keep the plot humming.

A Sidney Sheldon novel typically contains one or more — usually many more — of these ingredients: shockingly beautiful women, square-jawed heroes and fiendish villains; fame, fortune and intrigue; penthouses, villas and the jet travel these entail; plutonium, diamonds and a touch of botulism; rape, sodomy, murder and suicide; mysterious accidents and mysterious disappearances; an heiress or two; skeletons in lavishly appointed closets; shadowy international cartels, communists and lawyers; globe-trotting ambassadors, supermodels and very bad dogs; forced marriages and amnesia; naked ambition and nakedness in general; a great deal of vengeance; and as The New York Times Book Review described it in 1989, “a pastoral coed nude rubdown with dry leaves.”

Though most critics were united in their dismissal of Mr. Sheldon, a few conceded, grudgingly, that his work could be hard to put down. Take, for example, the opening passage of his memoir:

“At the age of 17, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide.”

Sidney Sheldon was born in Chicago on Feb. 11, 1917; his father was a salesman. Sidney grew up bookish, an anomaly in the household. (His parents had not been educated past the third grade.) He entered Northwestern University on a scholarship, but was forced by the Depression to drop out before earning a degree.

He held a series of odd jobs — factory worker, shoe salesman, cloakroom attendant, radio announcer — before striking out for New York in 1936 in the hope of making it as a songwriter. But his crushing mood swings, euphoria alternating with despair, cut his career short. (In later years, Mr. Sheldon’s bipolar disorder was treated successfully with medication.)

Young Mr. Sheldon headed for Hollywood, where he was eventually hired by Universal Studios as a $22-a-week script reader. By the early 1940s he had made his way into screenwriting. Among his notable screenplays are “Easter Parade” (1948, written withFrances Goodrich and Albert Hackett); “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949, with Betty Comden and Adolph Green); and “Annie Get Your Gun” (1950, with the siblings Dorothy and Herbert Fields).

During the mid-1940s and afterward, Mr. Sheldon also had success in the theater. In 1943 and 1944, three of his musicals opened on Broadway: a revival of Franz Lehar’s “Merry Widow” (Mr. Sheldon wrote the book with Ben Roberts); “Jackpot” (an original musical he wrote with Guy Bolton and Mr. Roberts); and “Dream With Music” (an original musical written with Dorothy Kilgallen and Mr. Roberts).

Mr. Sheldon turned to fiction only in his 50s, after having an idea for a thriller he felt was too psychologically nuanced for film, TV or the stage. He sold this book, his first novel, to Morrow for $1,000. The story of a handsome psychoanalyst accused of murder, it was published as “The Naked Face” in 1970.

After an impulsive early marriage that ended in divorce, Mr. Sheldon married Jorja Curtright in 1951; she died in 1985. In 1989 he married Alexandra Kostoff. She survives him, along with a daughter from his marriage to Ms. Curtright, Mary Sheldon; a brother, Richard; and two grandchildren.

Though Mr. Sheldon jetted to exotic locales to research his books and lived in homes brimming with art and antiques, his life had little in common with those of his characters — at least, to hear him tell it, in one crucial respect. In an interview with W magazine in 2004, Mr. Sheldon impishly described his forthcoming memoir:

“About my sex life,” he elaborated. “It’s one page long.”