His biggest hit was the musical “Redhead,” starring Gwen Verdon, which ran for a little more than a year from 1959 to 1960 and brought him a Tony for co-writing the book.Īfter working on about two dozen films, he turned toward television, writing scores of episodes for two hit sitcoms he created - “The Patty Duke Show” (ABC, 1963-66) and “I Dream of Jeannie” (NBC, 1965-70), according to Sheldon’s memoir “The Other Side of Me” (2005).Ĭreating a show for Duke was a challenge because “she was so extraordinarily talented I did not want to waste her abilities,” Sheldon wrote. He wrote half a dozen plays for Broadway.
After he helped adapt the Irving Berlin hit “Annie Get Your Gun” to the big screen, the 1950 Betty Hutton-Howard Keel vehicle received generally favorable reviews. Sheldon was also a screenwriter for the Judy Garland-Fred Astaire musical “Easter Parade” (1948) and the Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical “The Barkleys of Broadway” (1949). The farce, which starred Cary Grant and Shirley Temple, was “uncloyed with cuteness,” the New York Times review said at the time. His wry and witty script for “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer” (1947) won him a 1948 Academy Award for original screenplay. I write for readers.”įrom the early 1940s until almost 1970, he had written mainly for viewers. He has an instinctive ability to read women’s emotions.”įor his part, Sheldon said: “I don’t write for critics. “Readers care about his characters, many of whom are women under threat. “Sidney’s longevity secret is that he is a great storyteller, a master of the narrative tale,” his literary agent, Mort Janklow, told The Times in 2004. 1 on bestseller lists, Charles Champlin, then The Times’ arts editor, wrote that Sheldon had found “a statistically wider audience each time, evidently satisfying everyone except most literary critics, who regard popularity and quality as incompatible.”įans admired plotlines that were amazingly complex yet easy to follow - and the colorful characters who could never be counted on to do the expected. Some critics said his dialogue was banal and his plots were unbelievable, but many grudgingly acknowledged the author’s unusual talent at producing what the Washington Post once called “good junk reading time after time.”Īfter Sheldon’s 1987 novel “Windmills of the Gods” debuted at No.
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