If ever there was a writer who owned the word 'bestseller', it was Sidney Sheldon.
Born in on February 17, 1917 in Chicago to Jewish parents, Sheldon is the name behind six Broadway plays, 200 television scripts, 25 major motion pictures and 18 novels (which have sold over 300 million copies).
Having joined Universal Studios in Hollywood in 1937 as a script reader for $17 a week, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. The same year he won the Screen Writers Guild Award for Best Musical for Easter Parade.
An Edgar Allan Poe award winner (for his first novel The Naked Face), Sheldon also had a memoir to his credit, ranking him as one of the world's most prolific writers.
In 1997, Sheldon entered the record books as the most translated author in the world.
The author and screenwriter passed away on January 31, 2007 following complications from pneumonia at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California.
Photograph: Stephen Shugerman/Getty Images
Also read: Your fave Sidney Sheldon book? Tell us
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