Most best-selling phenomenons seem to have fairly average pre-book writing history, e.g. Tom Clancy was in insurance, John Grisham a lawyer, JK Rowling did whatever she did in between freezing and writing in a café. Sheldon was an exception - before he sold by the truck load in the 70s he'd already come off a major career writing for Broadway, television and film. Consider his track record - Broadway was mostly adaptations but successful ones, on television he created two legendary shows (Patty Duke and I Dream of Jeannie - a third, Hart to Hart was created after he became a best selling novelist - which, I'm sorry, is just plain showing off), wrote a number of popular films (mostly musicals but he also won the Oscar for The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer), even directed twice though both times unsuccessfully.
His childhood was a bit rough, though in hindsight both his parents seem to have had ideal characteristics for a successful author - dad was a con man, mum worshipped little Sidney. There was tragedy in his life - he is a manic depressive, one child died as a baby, they adopted another but then the real mother changed her mind and asked for her back. A fast paced enjoyable read with plenty of stuff about movie stars and people, etc (Dore Schary gets a bit of a shellacking for being a coward, Larry Hagman was trouble on the set of Jeanie, Patty Duke had a horrid life, the secret to Arthur Freed's success was pretty much just to hire really talented people and sit back and watch) - I would have enjoyed more on the life of a best-selling novelist, but maybe that wasn't that interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment