The Other Side of Me
A brilliant, highly spirited memoir of Sidney Sheldon's early life that provides as compulsively readable and racy a narrative as any of his bestselling novels.Growing up in 1930s America, the young Sidney knew what it was to struggle to get by. Millions were out of work and the Sheldon family was forced to journey around America in search of employment. Grabbing every chance he could, Sidney worked nights as a busboy, a clerk, an usher – anything – but he dreamt of becoming something more.His dream was to become a writer and to break Hollywood. By a stroke of luck, he found work as a reader for David Selznick, a top Hollywood producer, and the dream began to materialise.Sheldon worked through the night writing stories for the movies, and librettos for the musical theatre. Little by little he gained a reputation and soon found himself in demand by the hottest producers and stars in Hollywood.But, this was wartime Hollywood and Sidney had to play his part. He trained as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps and waited for the call to arms which could put a stop to his dreams of stardom.Returning to Hollywood and working with actors like Cary Grant and Shirley Temple; with legendary producers like David Selznick and Dore Schary; and musical stars like Irving Berlin, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, memories of poverty were finally behind Sheldon. This is his story: the story of a life on both sides of the tracks, of struggles and of success, and of how one man rose against the odds to become the master of his game.
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The Other Side of Me
Sidney Sheldon
For my beloved granddaughters, Lizy and Rebecca
so that they will know what a magical journey I had
‘He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family was begot by a flash of lightning.’
THOMAS FULLER
Seventeenth-century English clergyman
Table of Contents
At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide. I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I had read that whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.
It was Saturday—the Saturday I had been waiting for. My parents would be away for the weekend and my brother, Richard, was staying at a friend’s. Our apartment would be deserted, so there would be no one there to interfere with my plan.
At six o’clock, the pharmacist called out, ‘Closing time.’
He had no idea how right he was. It was time to close out all the things that were wrong with my life. I knew it wasn’t just me. It was the whole country.
The year was 1934, and America was going through a devastating crisis. The stock market had crashed and thousands of banks had failed. Businesses were folding everywhere. More than 13 million people had lost their jobs and were desperate. Wages had plunged to as low as a nickel an hour. A million vagabonds, including 200,000 children, were roaming the country. We were in the grip of a disastrous depression. Former millionaires were committing suicide, and executives were selling apples in the streets.
The most popular song was ‘Gloomy Sunday.’ I had memorized some of the lyrics:
Gloomy is Sunday.With shadows I spend it all.My heart and IHave decided to end it all.
The world was bleak and it fit my mood perfectly. I had reached the depths of despair. I could see no rhyme or reason for my existence. I felt dislocated and lost. I was miserable and desperately longing for something that I couldn’t define or name.
We lived near Lake Michigan, only a few blocks from the shore, and one night I walked down there to try to calm myself. It was a windy night and the sky was filled with clouds.
I looked up and said, ‘If there is a God, show yourself to me.’
And as I stood staring at the sky, the clouds merged together, forming a huge face. There was a sudden flash of lightning that gave the face blazing eyes. I ran all the way home, in a panic.
I lived with my family in a small, third-floor apartment in Rogers Park. The great showman, Mike Todd, said that he was often broke but he never felt poor. I, however, felt poor all the time because we were living in the demeaning kind of grinding poverty where, in a freezing winter, you had to keep the radiator off to save money and you learned to turn the lights out when not in use. You squeezed the last drops out of the ketchup bottle and the last dab of toothpaste out of the tube. But I was about to escape all that.
When I arrived at our dreary apartment, it was deserted. My parents had already left for the weekend and my brother had gone. There was no one to stop me from what I intended to do.
I walked into the little bedroom that Richard and I shared and I carefully removed the bag of sleeping pills I had hidden under the dresser. Next, I went into the kitchen, took a bottle of bourbon from the shelf where my father kept it and carried it back to the bedroom. I looked at the pills and the bourbon and I wondered how long it would take for them to work. I poured some whiskey into a glass and raised it to my lips. I would not let myself think about what I was doing. I took a swallow of the whiskey and the acrid taste of it made me choke. I picked up a handful of sleeping pills and started to raise them to my mouth, when a voice said, ‘What are you doing?’
I spun around, spilling some of the whiskey and dropping some of the pills.
My father was standing in the bedroom doorway. He moved closer. ‘I didn’t know you drank.’
I looked at him, stunned. ‘I—I thought you were gone.’
‘I forgot something. I’ll ask you again. What are you doing?’ He took the glass of whiskey from my hand.
My mind was racing. ‘Nothing, nothing.’
He was frowning. ‘This isn’t like you, Sidney. What’s wrong?’ He saw the pile of sleeping pills. ‘My God! What’s going on here? What are these?’
No plausible lie came to my mind. I said defiantly, ‘They’re sleeping pills.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m going to—to commit suicide.’
There was a silence. Then my father said, ‘I had no idea you were so unhappy.’
