Harold Robbins

In the real story, Harold Robbins was born Harold Rubin, on May 21, 1916 in New York City. He was the son of Russian and Polish immigrants who were well-educated and well-off. His biological mother died in childbirth, and he was raised by his father and stepmother in Brooklyn, where his father was a pharmacist. Robbins graduated from George Washington High School at 18, married his high-school sweetheart, Lillian Machinovitch, and got a job as an inventory clerk at a grocery.His father-in-law helped Harold get hired at Universal Pictures, where he managed to work his way up from shipping clerk to bookkeeping. Eager to become a producer, he began attempting to write. Although he struggled initially, he was spurred on by what he considered the poor quality of the books the studio was considering for screenplays at the time. After reading only 10 pages of Gone with the Wind, he declared "I can do better than this." In one version of his life story, he bet the head of production $100 that he could write a better novel.Regardless of the truth, his dissatisfaction with the films being produced by Universal Studios sent him in a more commercial direction in his writing. Robbins published Never Love a Stranger, the tale of a street orphan who rises to success, in 1948. This was followed in 1949 by The Dream Merchants. Both novels found immediate success and put him on the path to becoming a best-selling author...Buy a copy to keep reading!