SIDNEY SHELDON: The Plots Quicken

Sidney Sheldon, 75, has had a prolific career. He penned the screenplays for some 30 motion pictures, including “Easter Parade,” “Anything Goes” and “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” for which he won an Oscar.

A top Broadway playwright at 25, he had three musical hits simultaneously: “The Merry Widow,” “Jackpot” and “Dream With Music.” TV viewers know him as the creator of such series as “The Patty Duke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie” and “Hart to Hart.”

But all these accomplishments have been overshadowed by his enormous success as the author of such best-selling novels as “Other Side of Midnight,” “Bloodline,” “Rage of Angels,” “Master of the Game,” “Windmills of the Gods,” “Memories of Midnight” and the current bestseller, “The Stars Shine Down.”

With more than 100 million copies of his books in print in more than 30 countries, Sheldon has had all his novels filmed as features or TV miniseries. The latest, the four-hour miniseries adaptation of his 1988 “The Sands of Time,” premieres this week.

Deborah Raffin, Michael Nouri, James Brolin and Amanda Plummer star in the romantic adventure about three nuns who are forced to flee their convent in rural Spain after it is attacked by an evil Spanish general (Brolin). Along the way, the nuns fall under the protection of a rebel band led by a handsome Basque (Nouri).

Sheldon talked about his career and “Sands of Time” with Times Staff Writer Susan King over the phone from his home in Palm Springs, where he is working on a new novel.

How do you come up with ideas for your novels?

I put in long, long hours. First of all, I start with a character. I like to write about women who are capable at what they do, as any man would be. I hate that cliche of the “dumb blonde” and I try to eradicate that by writing about women who are attractive and capable and still retain their femininity. I know a lot of women like that.

I start with a character and I dictate to a secretary. I don’t start with any plot at all. In a sense, I am the reader as well as the writer, because I don’t know what is going to happen next. At the end of the day when I read the pages my secretary has typed, there are situations and characters there I didn’t know existed when I began dictating that morning. So it is an exciting way to work.

I research all my books in great detail. I won’t write about a meal anywhere in the world, whether it is Africa or Norway, unless I have had the meal in the restaurant.

I think the secret of any successful writing is to create characters the reader believes in. My characters are very real to me. I know they are real to my readers because of some of the fan mail I get.

In a book of mine called “Rage of Angels,” I let a little boy die. I got letters, furious letters--one edged in black like a condolence card. It got so bad that when I did the miniseries, I let him live.

What was your involvement in “Sands of Time”?

I am the executive producer on that and Michael Viner produced it and did a really sensational job. He has done a couple of my things before.

We talk about who is going to write the script because I won’t write those scripts because I am busy on a new book. I read the script and I suggest changes.

When I was doing movies and television, I was very heavily involved. I wrote all the scripts for “Jeannie” and “The Patty Duke Show” and I used three other names. On “Jeannie,” my name was on the screen so much I was embarrassed.

When did you begin writing?

I sold my first poem when I was 10 to a children’s magazine. My father was a salesman who had never read a book in his life and dropped out of school. I gave him this poem and I asked him to send it in to Wee Wisdom magazine. He was embarrassed if they would reject it. He thought it would be a rejection of him, so he put my uncle’s name on it and sent it in. A couple of weeks later, he was having lunch with my uncle and he said, “Why would a magazine called Wee Wisdom send me a check for $5?”

I went to Hollywood when I was 17. I got a job as a reader. My first job was at Universal. It was during the Depression and my mother gave me three weeks to find a job or come back to Chicago. I went to Hollywood and went around to all the studios and said, ‘My name is Sidney Sheldon and I want to be a writer. Who do I see?” The policeman at the gates always said the same thing, “Nobody.”

My three weeks were running out and I heard one night about readers, people who synopsize stories. I just finished reading “Of Mice and Men” and I wrote a synopsis and mailed it to all the studios. Within two days, I heard from every one of them. I got a job at Universal at $17 a week.

Do you miss writing features and Broadway plays?

Not really. When you are doing a screenplay, you are really anonymous. When “The Other Side of Midnight” happened, which was my second book, I started to get all of these fan letters and interviews. That had never happened to me before because no one cares about a screenwriter. Suddenly, from being anonymous for all of those years I worked in movies, I became a name.

“The Sands of Time” airs Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. on KTLA; Nov. 28-29 at 8 p.m. on KUSI and Dec. 2-3 at 5 p.m on WGN.