SIDNEY SHELDON - SIDNEY SHELDON DIES

Best-selling American author SIDNEY SHELDON has died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 89. His publicist reveals Sheldon died on Tuesday (30JAN07) at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, near his home in Palm Springs, California. Sheldon was also an accomplished playwright, writer and producer and an Oscar-winning screenwriter. He started out writing movies, plays and TV shows, to great success. He won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award in 1948 for the film THE BACHELOR AND THE BOBBY-SOXER and also created the sitcom I DREAM OF JEANNIE. Sheldon only turned his hand to novel-writing at the age of 50, and went onto publish 18 novels and sell 300 million copies of books including RAGE OF ANGELS and THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT.