Sheldon was born in Chicago on February 17, 1917. He began writing as a young boy and at the age of ten, he made his first sale of a poem for $10. During the Depression, he worked at a variety of jobs and while attending Northwestern University, he contributed short plays to drama groups.
At seventeen, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood. The only job he could find was as a reader of prospective film material at Universal Pictures for $22 a week. At night, he wrote his own screenplays and was able to sell one called "South of Panama," to the studio for $250 in 1941.
During World War II, he served as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. After the war, he established a reputation as a prolific writer in the New York theater community. At one point during this career, he had three musicals on Broadway, including a rewritten version of "The Merry Widow," "Jackpot," and "Dream with Music." Eventually, he received a Tony award as part of the writing team for the Gwen Verdon hit "Redhead," which brought him to the attention of Hollywood.
His first assignment after his return to Hollywood was "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947) starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, and Shirley Temple, which won him an Academy Award for best original screenplay of 1947.
In his 1982 interview, he described his years under contract with MGM as, "I never stopped working. One day Dore Schary (who was then production head) looked at a list of MGM projects then under production and noted that I had written eight of them, more than three other writers put together. That afternoon, he made me a producer."
In the early 1960s, when the movie industry was hurting because of television's popularity, Sheldon decided to make a switch. "I suppose I needed money," he remembered. "I met Patty Duke one day at lunch and started producing 'The Patty Duke Show,' (which starred Duke playing two identical cousins). I did something nobody else in TV ever did at that time. For seven years, I wrote almost every single episode of the series."
His next series was "I Dream of Jeannie," which he also created and produced, lasted five seasons, 1965-1970. The show concerned an astronaut, Larry Hagman, who lands on a desert island and discovers a bottle containing a beautiful, 2,000-year-old genie, played by Barbara Eden, who accompanies him back to Florida and eventually marries her.
According to Sheldon, it was "During the last year of 'I Dream of Jeannie,' I decided to try a novel. Each morning from 9 until noon, I had a secretary at the studio take all calls. I mean every single call. I wrote each morning or rather, dictated and then I faced the TV business." The result was "The Naked Face," which was scorned by book reviewers but sold 21,000 copies in hardcover. The novel scored even bigger in paperback, where it reportedly sold 3.1 million copies.
Sheldon's books, including titles like "Rage of Angels," "The Other Side of Midnight," "Master of the Game," and "If Tomorrow Comes," provided him with his greatest fame. They featured cleverly plotted stories with sensuality and a high degree of suspense, a device that kept fans from being able to put his books down.
In a 1982 interview, Sheldon told of how he created his novels; "I try to write my books so the reader can't put them down. I try to construct them so when the reader gets to the end of a chapter, he or she has to read just one more chapter. It's the technique of the old Saturday afternoon serial: leave the guy hanging on the edge of the cliff at the end of the chapter."
Explaining why so many women bought his books, he once commented that: "I like to write about women, who are talented and capable, but most important, retain their femininity. Women have tremendous power, their femininity, because men can't do without it."
Sheldon had few fans among highbrow critics, whose reviews of his books were generally reproachful of both Sheldon and his readers. Sheldon, however, remained undeterred, promoting the novels and himself with warm enthusiasm.
A big, cheerful man, he bragged about his work habits. Unlike other novelists who toil over typewriters or computers, Sheldon would dictate 50 pages a day to a secretary or a tape machine. He would correct the pages the following day and dictate another 50 pages, continuing the routine until he had between 1,200 to 1,500 pages. "Then I would do a complete rewrite 12 to 15 times," he said. "Sometimes I would spend a whole year rewriting."
Sheldon prided himself on the authenticity of his novels. During a 1987 interview,
