The Other Side of Me by Sidney Sheldon Hardback

Check out my other items!Be sure to add me to your favorites list!All items are in very good to excellent condition UNLESS otherwise noted in the item description so please read the item description thoroughly so there are no surprises.No personal checks please. All shipping rates provided are for the USA only. All other countries please inquire for the correct shipping rates. Please check out all my other terrific auctions !! Shipping is FREE . THANK-YOU !!!! I'll be happy to answer any questions on any items. Everything is 100% guaranteed without question. I highly reccommend insurance for all items just for added protection. If you're NOT happy neither am I. I will make a full and complete refund. THANKS !!!  Hope I'm still doing as good when I'm 88! This memoir by the author of so many wonderful books and movies (and TV shows) came as quite a surprise. I guess in the back of my head I had always suspected that Sidney Sheldon had a background on Broadway and Hollywood, but this reveals that he knew everybody and he knew them all intimately, the bad and the beautiful, and he relates incidents that occurred sixty years ago with the immediacy of a Quentin Tarantino melodrama. For sheer disaster, Sheldon provides a blow by blow account of the sinking of his ill-fated 1944 musical DREAM WITH MUSIC, in which everything that could possibly go wrong did, and on opening night with the critics all watching. I'd love to see it, that's for sure.

There's also portraits of all the stars, some of them more nasty than others. Those of you who disliked Harry Cohn, king creep of Columbis Studios, won't like him any better after hearing what he did to poor Donna Reed in this book, in Sidney's hearing! However Zsa Zsa Gabor, who I never really cared for, comes off as pretty gemutlich in Sidney's version of the way she introduced him to the woman, Jorja Curtright, who would become his wife and the mother of his children. His growing love for Jorja, and the birth of their children, is well told. When one of their daughters has a terrifying childhood illness, the story gains real momentum and you will be in tears by the time it is over and done with.

Despite having suffered from debilitating depression all of his life, he has been lucky in many ways. However someone should have offered to buy him the services of a fact checker, for from time to time his memory slips up and he places incidents in the wrong time frames. For example, he details the story of how the one and only Elvis Presley came to the set of one of the movies he wrote (and directed). He has this happening on the set of DREAM WIFE with Cary Grant (1953). I think that's a bit too early for Elvis. Maybe it happened but if so, it was probably later on in Elvis' career.   I had always seen the name "Sidney Sheldon" but never bothered to read any of his novels. I honestly had thought the books were about a mix of cheap romance and mystery novels because their covers looked that way. It's clear now that I had totally misjudged a book by its cover. Sheldon's autobiography, however, looked dignified as I pushed my cart at our local grocery store, Wegmans. Sheldon's face looks a lot like my grandfather's. So I picked it up and flipped to the first page. The first sentence demanded my attention. So I bought the book. I'm not a fast reader but this book turned out to be an exception. I took one breath and 150 pages flew right into my head, another breath and 200 pages. The last 50 or so pages I wanted to read slowly so it didn't finish. But, alas, it did. Or in a way it's the beginning really. Because I've already loaded up on most of Sheldon's books and the first book I will read is "The Other Side of Midnight".

One of the reviewers here laments that Sheldon doesn't go much in detail about novels he has written. But I suspect much of his novels have been influenced by what had transpired in his life. Sheldon didn't start writing novels until he was in his 50s! Yet his books are the most translated works in literature according to the Guinness Book of Records.