Harold Robbins
Harold Robbins was an influential American author born in 1916 in New York City, whose life experiences greatly informed his writing. Raised in an orphanage and facing various hardships, Robbins began his career in the wholesale sugar trade, amassing his first million by the age of twenty. However, financial setbacks led him to Hollywood, where he transitioned from a shipping clerk to a film studio executive. Robbins is best known for his provocative novels, starting with "Never Love a Stranger," which gained notoriety for its graphic sexual content. His subsequent works, such as "The Dream Merchants" and "The Carpetbaggers," often drew inspiration from real-life figures and events, blending elements of drama, romance, and scandal.
Despite mixed critical reception, Robbins achieved remarkable commercial success, with his books selling over fifty million copies and being adapted into various films and television programs. His storytelling formula typically featured characters navigating a tumultuous journey from poverty to wealth, often in glamorous settings, and frequently included themes of crime, drugs, and explicit relationships. Robbins's focus on financial gain in his writing career reflected his belief that literature could be a lucrative enterprise, making him a notable yet polarizing figure in the literary world.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Harold Robbins
Writer
- Born: May 21, 1916
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: October 14, 1997
- Place of death: Palm Springs, California
Biography
Harold Robbins, also known as Frank Kane and Harold Rubin, was born in New York City in 1916. He was raised in an orphanage and never discovered the identity of his parents. He attended George Washington High School and left when he was fifteen, working in various jobs. By the time he was twenty, he had made his first million dollars by selling sugar for the wholesale trade. He married young, divorced, and had other marriages.
By the early 1940’s, Robbins had lost his fortune and moved to Hollywood, California, where his first job was shipping clerk. Within a few years, he had become a film studio executive. His first novel, Never Love a Stranger, incorporated some of his diverse experiences growing up as an orphan in New York City. The novel created controversy with its graphic sexual content, as did his subsequent novels. The Dream Merchants, published a year later, deals with the Hollywood film industry, using his insider knowledge, fast-paced action, and melodramatic sexual relationships presented with details uncommon for the time he was writing.
From 1957 on, he worked as a full-time writer, including writing some of the films based on his novels. The Carpetbaggers, loosely based on the early (1920’s- 1930’s) life of Howard Hughes, became an international best seller. Several more of his novels also used the device of loosely disguising the lives of real people, such as film star Lana Turner in Where Love Has Gone and union boss Jimmy Hoffa in Memories of Another Day, with Robbins adding juicy sex scenes and vicious power struggles.
During his lifetime, Robbins became one of the most highly published authors in history, with his novels selling more than fifty million copies. They were widely translated and heavily marketed. Most of his novels were adapted for feature films or television movies or mini-series. The Carpetbaggers was made into a film of the same title within three years of its publication, still during the height of the book’s popularity. The Betsy, a melodrama of an aged auto manufacturer, was made into a feature film starring classical actor Laurence Olivier with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. A Stone for Danny Fisher, a coming-of-age story set in the Depression era of the 1930’s, was made into a musical film, King Creole (1958), starring Elvis Presley.
Robbins tended to lose and regain fortunes, as his characters often did, but he found a formula that worked well for sales: the lead character struggles from poverty to riches with no regard for those hurt along the way; he or she lives a high-style “jet set” lifestyle with no regard to cost; the story involves illegal drugs; violence; and/or shocking and explicit sex scenes, including rape and incest but with a steamy aura of romance; the character winds up ultimately still not fulfilled and happy despite the power and money. Unpopular with critics but widely popular with readers of the time, Robbins often was quoted as saying that writers write for money.