The Other Side of Me

chapter 33
Several years later I decided I wanted to do a black-tie show with sophisticated people in elegant backgrounds. I created Hart to Hart, and it went on the air in 1979, with Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg producing. We were fortunate in obtaining Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as our stars. The show was a hit and ran for five years.

In the midst of my doing other projects, the idea about the psychiatrist kept coming back to me. I could not seem to get rid of it. It was as though the character was demanding to have a life. I had no confidence in my ability to write a novel, but in order to get the psychiatrist off my back, I decided I was going to write his story.

Mornings I dictated the novel to one of my secretaries. Afternoons I put on my producer's hat and worked on other projects.

The novel was finally finished and I had no idea what to do with it. I did not know any literary agents.

I called a dear friend of mine, the talented novelist Irving Wallace.

"Irving, I have a manuscript of a novel here. Who do I send it to?"

"Let me read it," he said.

I sent it to him and waited for his phone call saying, "Don't send it to anybody."

Instead, he called and said, "I think it's wonderful. Send it to my agent in New York. I'll tell him to expect it."

The novel was called The Naked Face and it was turned down by five book publishers. The sixth one to read it was Hillel Black, an editor at William Morrow.

My agent called. "William Morrow wants to publish your book. They'll give you a thousand-dollar advance."

I was filled with a sudden sense of excitement. I was going to have a book published. William Morrow did not know it, but I would have gladly paid them a thousand dollars.

"Great," I said.

Hillel wanted a few minor changes made and I quickly took care of them.

The novel was published in 1970. The day The Naked Face came out, I panicked. I was sure it was going to break every publishing record: that it was not going to sell one single copy. I was so certain of it that I hurried to a bookstore in Beverly Hills and bought one copy - a tradition that I have continued to this day.

It is customary when a book comes out for an author to travel around the country, publicizing it, making the public aware that the book is in stores. Authors appear on television shows, attend book parties, and go to literary lunches to publicize their books. I called Hillel Black.

"I just want you to know," I said, "that I'm willing to go on a book tour. I'll do all the television shows you can set up and - "

"Sidney, there is no point in sending you on a book tour."

"What are you talking about?"

"Outside of Hollywood, no one knows who you are. None of the shows will book you. Forget it."

But I did not forget it. I called a public relations man and explained the situation to him.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I'll handle it."

He booked me on The Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, and The David Frost Show, as well as half a dozen others.

He also arranged for me to go to a literary luncheon at the storied Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, California. The procedure was for the authors to talk briefly about their books, have lunch, and then the people in attendance would buy the books, which were at the back of the room, and come up to the dais to have the author sign his or her book.

Next to me on the dais that day were Will and Ariel Durant, the popularizers of world history who spent a lifetime writing The Story of Civilization; Francis Gary Powers, who had written his book about his experiences of being shot down in a U-2; Gwen Davis, a well-known novelist; and Jack Smith, who wrote a popular column in the Los Angeles Times.

During lunch, each of us was introduced and we briefly talked about our book.

When lunch was over, members of the audience bought their books at the back of the room and then lined up in front of their favorite authors. There was a line in front of Will and Ariel Durant that ran clear to the back of the room. The line in front of Jack Smith was almost as long. Gary Powers had a long line, and so did Gwen Davis.

There was not one single person in line for my book. Red-faced, I took out a notebook, pretending to be busy writing. I wished there was some way I could have escaped. The lines for the other authors got longer and I sat there, writing gibberish.

After what seemed like forever, I heard a voice say, "Mr. Sheldon?"

I looked up. A little old lady was standing in front of me. She said, "What is your book called?"

I said, "The Naked Face."

She smiled and said, "All right. I'll buy one."

It was an act of mercy.

That was the only book I sold that day.

A few weeks later, I flew to New York and met with Larry Hughes, the president of William Morrow.

"I have good news," Larry said. "We've sold seventeen thousand copies of The Naked Face and already went into a second printing."

I looked at him for a long moment. "Mr. Hughes, I have a television show on the air that's watched by twenty million people every week. I'm really not thrilled with selling seventeen thousand copies of anything."

When the reviews of the book came out, I was pleasantly surprised. They were almost all favorable, and the topper was the New York Times review. The reviewer said, "The Naked Face is clearly the best first mystery of the year." And to top it all off, at the end of the year I received an Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination.

When I returned to Hollywood, I was still working on Nancy, but I could not stop thinking about writing another novel. The Naked Face had not been financially successful. In fact, I had spent more on publicity than the book had made. But there was a more important element involved in writing the novel. I had experienced a sense of creative freedom that I had never known before.

When one writes a screenplay or television show or a play for the theater, it is always a collaborative effort. Even if you write alone, you are working with a cast, a director, a producer, and musicians.

The novelist is free to create whatever he or she wants. There is no one to say:

"Let's change the scene to the mountains instead of the valley . . ."

"There are too many sets . . ."

"Let's cut out the words here and create the mood with music . . ."

The novelist is the cast, the producer, and the director. The novelist is free to create whole worlds, to go back in time or forward in time, to give his characters armies, servants, villas. There is no limit except the imagination.

I decided that I was going to write another novel, even though I had no expectations that it would be any more successful financially than The Naked Face. I needed an exciting idea, and I remembered a story of mine that Dore Schary had refused to buy at RKO, Orchids for Virginia. I decided that that was the story I wanted to tell. I turned the screenplay into an elaborately textured novel, and changed the title to The Other Side of Midnight.

The book was published a year later and it changed my life. It stayed on the New York Times best-seller listfor fifty-two weeks. The Other Side of Midnight became a phenomenon, an international runaway best-seller.

Bea Factor's prediction that I would become world-famous had finally come true.
Afterword
Of all the varied writing I have done over the years - motion pictures, theater, television, novels - I prefer writing novels. Novels are a different world, a world of the mind and the heart. In a novel, one can create characters and bring them to life. The transition from playwright and screenwriter to novelist was easier than I had expected. And the advantages!

A novelist travels all over the world doing research, meeting interesting people, and going to interesting places. If people are affected by something you wrote, they let you know. I sometimes get mail that is very emotional.

I received a letter from a woman who had had a massive heart attack and was in the hospital, and would not let her parents or her boyfriend come in to see her. She wrote me that she just wanted to die. She was twenty-one years old. Someone left a copy of The Other Side of Midnight on her bedside. She started to skim through it. Intrigued, she went back to the beginning and read the book. When she was through, she had been so caught up in the characters and their problems that she forgot about her own, and was ready to face life again.

Another woman wrote to tell me that her dying daughter's last request had been that all my books be spread around her hospital bed, and she had died happy.

In Rage of Angels, I let a little boy die and I began to receive hate mail. One woman wrote to me from the east, gave me her phone number, and said, "Call me. I can't sleep. Why did you let him die?"

I got so many similar letters that when I did the miniseries, I let him live.

Women have told me that they had become lawyers because of Jennifer Parker, the heroine of Rage of Angels.

My novels are sold in one hundred eight countries and have been translated into fifty-one languages. In 1997, the Guinness Book of World Records listed me as the Most Translated Author in the World. I have sold over three hundred million books. If there is one reason for the success of my books, I believe it's because my characters are very real to me and, therefore, real to my readers. Foreign readers identify with my books because love and hate and jealousy are universal emotions that everyone understands.

When I became a novelist, one of the things that struck me was how much more respect a novelist gets than a screenwriter working in Hollywood. Jack Warner said, "What are writers but schmucks with typewriters?" A sentiment shared by most studio heads.

One day when I was writing Easter Parade, I was in Arthur Freed's office when his insurance agent came in. We were talking when the secretary announced that the dailies were ready to be seen. Freed turned to his insurance agent and said, "Let's go look at the dailies."

The two men got up and walked out of the room, leaving me sitting there, alone, while they went to watch a picture I had written.

Not much respect.

I enjoy traveling around the world doing research for my novels and I have fun doing it. In Athens, I was researching The Other Side of Midnight. Jorja was with me. We passed a police station and I said, "Let's go in."

We went inside. There was a policeman behind the desk. He said, "Can I help you?"

"Yes," I said. "Can someone here tell me how to blow up a car?"

Thirty seconds later we were locked in a room. Jorja was panicky. "Tell them who you are," she said.

"Don't worry. There's plenty of time."

The door opened and four policemen with guns came in. "You want to blow up a car? Why?"

"I'm Sidney Sheldon and I'm doing research."

Fortunately, they knew who I was, and they told me how to blow up a car.

In South Africa, I was doing research for my novel called Master of the Game, which is about diamonds. I got in touch with DeBeers and asked whether I could go into one of their diamond mines. They gave me permission and I had the rare experience of exploring a diamond mine.

An executive of DeBeers told me about one of their mines that was a beach with diamonds lying on the surface, in full view, protected by the ocean on one side, and a patrolled gate on the other. I felt challenged, and figured out a way for one of my characters to get inside and steal the diamonds.

For If Tomorrow Comes, I checked on the security of the Prado Museum in Madrid. I was told it was impregnable, but one of my characters figured out a way to steal a valuable painting from there.

In Windmills of the Gods, I went to Romania, which was one of my locales in the book. Ceausescu was alive at the time, and there was a paranoid feeling in the city. I went to the American embassy and I was in the office of the American ambassador when I said, "I would like to ask you a question."

He got to his feet. "Come with me." He took me down the hall into a room guarded by Marines twenty-four hours a day and said, "What do you want to know?"

"Do you think my room is bugged?" I asked.

"Not only is your hotel room bugged, but if you go to a nightclub, they will bug you there."

Three nights later, Jorja and I went to a nightclub. The maitre d' seated us. The air-conditioning was hitting us and we got up and moved. The maitre d' came running back and put us back at the first table. That was obviously the table that was bugged.

The next day I had lunch at the ambassador's home and I said, "I would like to ask you a question."

He got to his feet. "Why don't we go for a walk in the garden?"

In Romania, even the ambassador's home was bugged.

For The Sands of Time I went to Spain to research the Basque separatist movement. I had the driver take the two routes that the nuns in the book would take. We ended up at San Sebastian. When my driver pulled up in front of the hotel, he said, "I'm leaving now."

"You can't leave," I said. "We're right in the middle of doing research."

"You don't understand," he told me. "This is the headquarters of the Basques. When they see the Madrid license plates, they will blow up the car."

I met with some of the Basques and heard their side of the story. They felt that they were displaced citizens. They wanted their land back, along with their language and their autonomy.

These are a few of my experiences. I am very grateful for them. I love to write, and I'm lucky to be working at something that I care about. I believe that no one can take credit for whatever talent they may have. Talent is a gift, whether it's for painting or music or writing, and we should be grateful for whatever talent we have been given, and work hard at it.

What I enjoy most is the actual process of writing. My business manager once gave me five hundred dollars worth of tennis lessons as a birthday present. A tennis pro came to the house once a week and gave me a lesson.

One day he said to me, "We've used up the money. Do you want to continue?"

I enjoyed playing tennis very much. I started to say yes, and then I thought, I don't want to be here. I want to be in my office, writing.

I haven't been on my tennis court since, and that was twenty years ago.

Four years after Cary Grant's last movie, Walk Don't Run, Cary called to say the Academy was giving him an honorary Oscar in New York, and he asked if I would join him there. I was happy to. His award was long overdue.

I was very pleased to see that over the years, Bob Russell and Ben Roberts had a series of successes.

My brother Richard eventually divorced, and in 1972 he surprised us all when he met and married an attractive businesswoman named Betty Rhein.

In 1985, my lovely Jorja died of a heart attack. It was an unbelievable loss and there was an emptiness in my life that I felt would never be filled.

It was a little over three years later when it happened. I met Alexandra Kostoff and my life changed. She is all the women I had written about - intelligent, beautiful, and amazingly talented, and it was love at first sight. We had a private wedding in Las Vegas, with only family there.

As a surprise, my buddy Marty Allen and his wife, Karon, appeared. The multitalented Karon played a wedding march on the piano that she had written, and the wedding went on.

Alexandra and I have been married now for sixteen wonderful years.

To my great delight, my daughter, Mary, has become a writer. To date, she has had ten novels published. My granddaughter, Lizy, had a novel published when she was sixteen. I expect ten-year-old Rebecca to be next.

My manic depression - today commonly known as bipolar syndrome - has slowed me down the last four years, but it is pretty much under control now with the help of lithium. I am planning a new novel, a nonfiction book, and a play for Broadway. I have just celebrated my eighty-eighth birthday.

I treasure the roller-coaster thrill ride that my life has been. It has been an exciting and wonderful journey. I am grateful to Otto, who convinced me to keep turning the pages, and to Natalie, for her unshakable faith in me.

I have had an incredible career with great successes and king-sized failures. I wanted to share my story with you and to thank you - because you, the readers, have always been there for me. I am deeply grateful to every one of you.

The elevator is up.