It’s the birthday of one of the bestselling authors of all time, Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007, #nicelonglife), who wrote movie screenplays like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and sitcoms like I Dream of Jeannie before becoming a suspense novelist who would sell 300 million books.

(I’m way too young for The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, but I grew up on I Dream of Jeannie reruns, and at the time, I thought it was really great television. Sigh. In my own defense, it won an Emmy in 1967.)

Sheldon was born in Chicago, Illinois, and studied at Northwestern University but had to drop out due to the Great Depression. He held a number of random jobs—from cloakroom attendant to radio announcer—and then went to New York, where he failed to be a songwriter, and then to Hollywood, where he started writing scripts for $22/week for Universal. His better-known scripts include Easter Parade (1948), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and The Bachelor Etc. (1947), which screenplay won him an Academy Award. He also wrote musicals and sitcoms, including The Patty Duke Show and Hart to Hart.

Sheldon published his first novel, The Naked Face, in 1970. He went on to write about 18 novels, including The Other Side of Midnight (1974), Master of the Game (1982), If Tomorrow Comes (1985), and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2004). His novels were highly sensationalistic, full of sex, wealth, violence, and intrigue. Critics generally panned him, but his books were translated into 51 languages. In 2005, Sheldon published an autobiography, The Other Side of Me, in which he wrote about his lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder.

(NB: When I was in high school, I wrote a terrible fantasy novel entitled The Master of the Game. One day I walked into a Waldenbooks—I think—and saw that a man named Sidney Sheldon had stolen my title. It was a bitter moment.)

Sheldon was thrice married: once divorced, once widowed, and finally survived by his third wife and only daughter. He died at 89 of complications from pneumonia.

Have a restful evening, turn out your light at a decent hour, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.