Robbins, Harold 1916-1997

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Robbins, Harold 1916-1997
(Francis Kane, Harold Rubin)

PERSONAL:

Born Francis Kane; given name, Harold Rubin (some sources say Rubins) when adopted in 1927; name legally changed to Harold Robbins; born May 21, 1916, in New York, NY; died of pulmonary arrest, October 14, 1997, in Palm Springs, CA; son of a pharmacist; married Lillian Machnivitz, 1937 (divorced, 1962); married Grace Palermo (divorced, 1992); married Jann Stapp, February 14, 1992; children: (second marriage) Caryn, Adreana. Education: Attended public high school in New York, NY.

CAREER:

Writer and novelist. Worked as a grocery clerk, cook, cashier, errand boy, and bookies' runner, 1927-31; worked in food factoring business during 1930s; worked in the wholesale sugar trade; Universal Pictures, New York, NY, shipping clerk in warehouse, 1940-41, executive director of budget and planning, 1942-57.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Never Love a Stranger, Knopf (New York, NY), 1948, reprinted, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

The Dream Merchants, Knopf (New York, NY), 1949, reprinted, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1987.

A Stone for Danny Fisher, Knopf (New York, NY), 1952, reprinted, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

Never Leave Me, Knopf (New York, NY), 1953, reprinted, Forge (New York, NY), 2001.

79 Park Avenue, Knopf (New York, NY), 1953, reprinted, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1982.

Stiletto, Dell (New York, NY), 1960, reprinted, Donald I. Fine (New York, NY), 1997.

The Carpetbaggers, Trident Press (London, England), 1961, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Where Love Has Gone, Trident Press (London, England), 1962, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1987.

The Adventurers, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1987.

The Inheritors, Trident Press (London, England), 1969, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

The Betsy, Trident Press (London, England), 1971, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1985.

The Pirate, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1974.

The Lonely Lady, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1976.

Dreams Die First, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.

Memories of Another Day, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1979.

Goodbye, Janette, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Spellbinder, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

Descent from Xanadu, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1984.

The Storyteller, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1985.

The Piranhas, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1986.

Three Complete Novels (contains The Carpetbaggers, 79 Park Avenue, and A Stone for Danny Fisher), Outlet Book (New York, NY), 1994.

The Raiders (sequel to The Carpetbaggers), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

The Stallion (sequel to The Betsy), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

Tycoon, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1997.

The Predators, Forge (New York, NY), 1998.

The Secret (sequel to The Predators), Forge (New York, NY), 2000.

Never Enough, Forge (New York, NY), 2001.

Sin City, Forge (New York, NY), 2002.

Heat of Passion, Forge (New York, NY), 2003.

NOVELS, WITH JUNIUS PODRUG

The Betrayers, Forge (New York, NY), 2004.

Blood Royal, Forge (New York, NY), 2005.

The Devil to Pay, Forge (New York, NY), 2006.

OTHER

Also author of scripts for The Survivors, a television series for American Broadcasting Co. (ABC), 1969-70.

ADAPTATIONS:

Never Love a Stranger was filmed by Allied Artists in 1957; A Stone for Danny Fisher was filmed as King Creole by Paramount in 1958; The Carpetbaggers was filmed by Paramount in 1963; Where Love Has Gone was filmed by Paramount in 1964; Nevada Smith, based on a character in The Carpetbaggers, was filmed by Paramount in 1966; The Adventurers was filmed by Paramount in 1968; Stiletto was filmed by Avco-Embassy in 1970; The Betsy was filmed by Allied Artists in 1978; The Pirate was filmed by Warner Bros. Television, 1978; Dreams Die First was filmed by American International in 1979; The Dream Merchants was filmed by Columbia Pictures Television, 1980; The Lonely Lady was filmed by Universal Pictures, 1983; 79 Park Avenue was filmed as a television miniseries.

SIDELIGHTS:

By the close of the twentieth century total sales of Harold Robbins's books had reached nearly three-quarters of a billion copies worldwide. His novel The Carpetbaggers had gone through more than seventy printings and sold over eight million copies; 79 Park Avenue sold more than five and a half million copies; Never Love a Stranger and Dreams Die First each topped three million in sales. None of Robbins's novels sold less than 600,000 copies. The books have also been translated into thirty-nine languages and have been sold in sixty-three countries around the world. Many have been made into popular films as well. Even after the author's death in 1997, the Robbins industry continued on, with his story ideas fleshed out into novel form by a ghostwriter using the Robbins's name.

Because of these impressive statistics, Robbins once called himself the best novelist alive. "There's not another writer being published today," he told Leslie Hanscom of the Pittsburgh Press, "whose every book—every book he's ever written—is always on sale everywhere, and that's gotta mean something … . You can find my books anywhere in the world in any language."

The typical Robbins novel is a long, intricately plotted story loaded with illicit sex, graphic violence, and powerful conflicts between members of the international jet set. Often they are also exposés of a sort, taking the reader behind the scenes of a glamorous and respected industry to reveal the secret corruption there. Often, too, the characters are thinly veiled versions of famous people in business and high society. The best of Robbins's novels are "fun to read, full of outrageous people and complicated plot lines, not to mention lots of supposedly sizzling sex," Joy Fielding wrote in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Robbins divided his books into two categories. The first includes adventure novels like The Carpetbaggers which focus on the Machiavellian power plays of unscrupulous captains of industry. The second type is what Robbins called his Depression novels. Dick Lochte explained in the Los Angeles Times Book Review that these are "close in style and substance to the hardboiled novels of the ‘30s in which tough street kids fight their way out of the proletarian jungle to achieve wealth and power." These latter books are largely based on Robbins's own life story, which in many ways sounds fantastic enough to be fiction.

Robbins began life as Francis Kane, an abandoned infant whose parents were unknown. Raised in a Roman Catholic orphanage in New York's tough Hell's Kitchen area, Robbins was placed in a series of foster homes as a youth. When the last of his foster parents, a Manhattan pharmacist, adopted him in 1927, he was given the name Harold Rubin. He used the name Harold Robbins when he turned to writing in the 1940s and later made it his legal name.

At the age of fifteen, Robbins left home to begin a series of low-paying jobs in New York City. He worked as a bookies' runner, a cook, a clerk, and an errand boy, yet none of these jobs in the Depression years of the 1930s provided much opportunity for the ambitious Robbins. But while working as an inventory clerk in a grocery store, Robbins noted that fresh produce was difficult to find. The food distribution system of the time was so bad that some crops were rotting in the fields while store shelves were empty. Robbins got into the food factoring business, buying options on farmers' crops that were in demand in the city and selling the options to canning companies and wholesale grocers. By the time he was twenty, Robbins was a millionaire.

In 1939, with war looming in the public mind, Robbins speculated in crop futures and lost. Reasoning that a major war would cut off or sharply reduce shipments of sugar, thus sending prices upward, Robbins invested his fortune in sugar at 4.85 dollars per hundred pounds. Unfortunately, the Roosevelt administration chose to freeze food prices, and sugar was frozen at 4.65 dollars per hundred pounds, so Robbins went bankrupt. He took a job with the Universal Pictures warehouse in New York City as a shipping clerk. When he uncovered overcharges made to the company in excess of 30,000 dollars, Robbins was promoted, eventually becoming the executive director of budget and planning.

It was while working for Universal Pictures that Robbins first began to write. A vice president of the company overheard Robbins complain about a novel that the studio had bought for filming. He challenged Robbins to write a better book himself, and Robbins took him up on the offer. The resulting six-hundred-page novel was sent to an agent, and within three weeks the publishing house of Alfred Knopf accepted the book for publication.

Never Love a Stranger, Robbins's personal favorite of his novels, appeared in 1948. Although the book's candid approach to sex caused the police in Philadelphia to confiscate copies, many reviewers found it a realistic portrayal of a tough New York City orphan coming of age. Drawing heavily on Robbins's own experiences on the streets of Manhattan, the story revolves around the hustlers and racketeers of that city and recounts the protagonist's efforts to find his place in the world. Saturday Review of Literature critic N.L. Rothman noted that "Robbins' writing is strong, his pace varied, and his invention admirable."

Robbins followed his initial success with The Dream Merchants, a novel set in the Hollywood film world and telling of the rise of Johnny Edge, a movie entrepreneur. The novel also traces the rise of Hollywood itself. Saturday Review of Literature contributor Budd Schulberg found that "the upward climb of immigrant shopkeepers to positions of power in the industry of mass entertainment makes colorful history and entertaining reading, but Mr. Robbins never quite succeeds in re-creating them as vital fictional characters." Citing Robbins's daring sex scenes, a reviewer for the Christian Science Monitor, M.W. Stoer, wrote that "it is regrettable that a book with so much in it that is otherwise entertaining and tempered with warm humanity should have been allowed to lapse into such tastelessness."

One of the most critically praised of Robbins's novels is A Stone for Danny Fisher, the story of a poor Jewish boy's struggle to succeed in the New York of the 1930s and 1940s. James B. Lane, writing in the Journal ofPopular Culture, claimed that the book "recorded the epic battle of ethnic groups against inconsequentialness, and the disintegration of their rigid moral, ethical, and cultural standards under the stress and strain of survival." Despite some reservations about the novel's believability, James Kelly praised Robbins's "vivid characterization" and "feeling for individual scenes." in his New York Times review. Thomas Thompson speculated in Life magazine that had Robbins ended his career with A Stone for Danny Fisher, the novel "would have reserved him a small place in literature."

However, Robbins went on to write many more bestselling novels, few of which received a sympathetic hearing from the critics. Evan Hunter, for example, argued in the New York Times Book Review that "in true pulp style Mr. Robbins never tries to evoke anything except through cliché … . His people never simply say anything. They say it 'shortly’ or ‘darkly,’ or they ‘growl’ or ‘grunt’ it." Reviewing Spellbinder for the Chicago Tribune Book World, Frederick Busch stated that "the book is the paginated equivalent of television: shallow, semiliterate, made of clichés and stereotypes, full of violence and heavy breathing. People who love TV love such books." Reviewing The Betsy for Books and Bookmen, Roger Baker called it "about as realistic and pungent as Batman … . The superficiality of the characters is beyond belief; the mechanical setting-up of the sexual bouts is crude; and the fact that everyone in the saga seems either vicious or bats or both doesn't help at all." Fielding even thought that Robbins's work has worsened over time: "Robbins keeps churning them out, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his already cardboard characters have turned to paper, that his plots have virtually disappeared, and that … his sex scenes are not only silly but downright pathetic."

Not all critics dealt harshly with Robbins. In his review of The Storyteller, for example, Lochte admitted that "in describing the art of economic survival in the 1940s—how deals were cut with Brooklyn crime bosses, Manhattan publishers and Hollywood studio heads—Robbins shows how good a writer he is. His prose is lean and straightforward, with a keen, cynical edge." Lane thought: "Robbins, the bestselling American novelist, has been spurned and overlooked by literary critics because of the alleged mediocrity of his work. Nevertheless, he has won public affection by portraying identifiable life-situations in a realistic and titillating manner. His characters resemble the common man even as their bizarre exploits, fascinating sex lives, and heroic struggles exude an air of Walter Mitty."

Despite the usual scorn his work received from the critics, Robbins fared well with the reading public. His books set phenomenal sales records, while his The Carpetbaggers is estimated to be the fourth most-read book in history. The profits from such overwhelming popularity assuaged some of the critical barbs. For a time Robbins lived in a style as lavish as any he could create in his fiction, with mansions in several glamorous locations, private planes, Rolls-Royces and other luxury automobiles, and an 85-foot yacht moored in the Mediterranean, equipped "with two beautiful French whores I hired as decorations," as the author recalled to Bettijane Levine of the Los Angeles Times.

Robbins lost most of his fortune in the late 1980s, however, "due to illness, financial naïveté, divorce or indulgence," according to Levine. Sales of his books began to sag slightly at that time. The Piranhas was widely criticized as a dull, muddled potboiler, and numerous reviewers claimed that Robbins had been eclipsed by younger writers "who can outsex, outviolence, and outgross him," in the words of New York Times Book Review contributor Ed Weiner. In 1985, the writer took a serious fall while stepping out of his shower. He crushed one hip and fractured the other. Surgery meant to correct the injuries caused severe nerve damage. An implant intended to block the pain was ineffective, and he became progressively more debilitated and confined to a wheelchair. For nearly a decade, he was unable to write.

Robbins began a determined effort to restart his career in the mid-1990s, assisted by his third wife, Jann. Always wise to the ways of marketing, he began his comeback with a sequel to his most popular book, The Carpetbaggers. The Raiders continues the saga of Jonas Cord, the ruthless tycoon loosely based on Howard Hughes. This time around, Jonas incurs the wrath of the Mafia, dodges U.S. Senate hearings on his business practices, and discovers an illegitimate son, who is now of an age to compete with his father. A Publishers Weekly reviewer gave an approving nod to The Raiders, noting that while the author "hasn't matched the potboiling heat of The Carpetbaggers here, this is still his most entertaining novel in years … . Robbins can still make readers turn the pages through cliff-hanging chapters and a gallery of eccentric characters." The reviewer concluded that The Raiders is a "lively follow-up to a commercial fiction classic."

Robbins followed the success of The Raiders with another sequel. The Stallion picks up where The Betsy, his exposé of the automobile industry, left off. As usual, the plot is a fast-paced blend of money, sex, and revenge. "The international art world, the Japanese impact on the auto industry, and a blood feud provide a fascinating global web of subplots in bedchambers and boardrooms as Robbins spins his lascivious, melodramatic tale," a Publishers Weekly reviewer reported. "While this novel may not be the powerhouse The Betsy was, it has wheels and is a worthy successor."

Discussing the vicissitudes of his life with Levine, Robbins once declared that although he now owned only one house, was largely immobilized, and lived with almost constant pain, he was "very happy … . I may have lost a lot, in terms of money, but I don't miss it. In fact, I have more now than I ever had. Without Jann, I'd be nothing … . She gives me such unbelievable support that it makes me realize how much I have now that I never had before. Our home, our relationship, the things we share and look forward to together. It's more meaningful than anything … . Maybe I'm finally growing up … . Maybe we all get old enough that we don't think about sex anymore. We think about the good things we have in our lives. The warmth and the affection."

With the 1997 title Tycoon, Robbins "relies on a general plotline that has proven successful for him in the past," remarked Kathleen Hughes in a Booklist review. Following the rise of Jack Lear, the son of a Jewish junkman, as he marries into a blue-blooded Boston family and goes into radio and television at exactly the right time, Tycoon is one of Robbins's typical rags-to-riches stories, with Lear bedding enough women to fill a cruise ship. Though Hughes felt the novel is "condescending to women in the extreme," she also believed that "there is definitely a market for this, and his fans will appreciate it." A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded: "Wooden prose notwithstanding, the intricate blend of corporate and carnal gymnastics makes this a highly seductive read."

Robbins died on October 24, 1997, of pulmonary arrest, but his death did not stop the flow of Robbins novels. The following year his first posthumous novel, The Predators, was published. It features another of his plucky Jewish kids—Jerome Cooper—who rises from the lower classes of Hells Kitchen after the Mafia kills his family to ultimately join the jet-setters. The Predators is a "fast, easy read bursting with sex, greed, and a dizzying array of terms for male genitalia," according to Hughes in Booklist. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that although the prose "is as formulaic as the plot, it will not disappoint the author's many grieving fans."

More posthumous novels have followed, several of which have been largely crafted by ghostwriters filling out Robbins's earlier drafts and storylines. The Secret is a sequel to The Predators. The main character is Jerome's son, Len Cooper, who makes his way in the world, becoming a lawyer but eventually joining his father Jerry's lingerie business. Told in alternating narratives by Len and Jerry, the story applies Robbins's penchant for larger-than-life characters and business dealings to the up-and-down story of the Cheeks lingerie empire. Although subplots explore such higher issues as sweatshop conditions in Asia and trade relations with China, the story eventually glides back to the more lurid events that might be expected from a story heavily involving naughty undergarments. Eric Robbins noted in a Booklist review that the story is "chock-full of all the gritty characters and steamy sex that Robbins' fans desire." The novel's "mix of comedy and tragedy, grossness and tender feelings, are described in vivid language at perfect tempo," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Never Enough is a another posthumous title, this one following the sexual exploits of David Shea, a powerful investment banker who goes though wives and rivals as he makes his way to the top of his profession. The story begins in the 1970s in New Jersey, where Shea, the ringleader of four boyhood friends, lets friend Cole Jennings take the blame for a killing. Later, Shea and Jennings team up on crooked investment deals. This novel induced a reviewer for Publishers Weekly to hope that "this will be the last of the post-Robbins Robbins novels; the dead should be allowed to rest in peace." Hughes, however, observed in Booklist that this latest effort by a ghostwriter "does manage to remain faithful to Robbins' unique mode of storytelling," and she went on to call the book "rather formulaic but nevertheless amusing." Harriet Klausner, writing for BookBrowser, felt that despite structural flaws in the book, Robbins's fans "will keep reading because the novel is easy to follow and the audience will want Dave to get his comeuppance."

Sin City, another posthumous publication completed by a ghost writer, "moves quickly and is great fun," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Similar to Rob- bins' earlier rags-to-riches coming-of-age stories, the book follows Zack Riordan, a young man originally born Howard Hughes, Jr., the illegitimate son of the famed millionaire recluse. Zack comes to Las Vegas at age twelve, and by the time he is twenty-four he has parlayed his quick wits, charm, and daring manner into a position as the youngest casino security chief on the notorious Las Vegas Strip. Conflict with the son and daughter of his mentor and casino owner, Con Holliday, results in his abrupt dismissal, but Zack applies his talents to a variety of criminal enterprises in Asia until he has built up a sufficient reserve of cash to buy and operate his own casino. When he comes back to the United States, he learns he has an illegitimate child of his own with Holliday's daughter. Eventually, as his connections to organized crime and unfaithful friends begin to erode his status, Zack begins to wonder if the acquisition of power and wealth was worth the extreme effort and high price it required. "Robbins' faithful fans will be lining up for this one," noted Hughes in another Booklist review. A Publishers Weekly critic felt that Robbins's many fans "will be rewarded for their devotion with this unexpectedly lively offering."

Heat of Passion delves into the international diamond industry and uses it as a backdrop for the story of Win Liberte, an arrogant and wealthy trust-fund wastrel who inherited the family's diamond concerns at age eleven. Due to some bad investment decisions, and an uncle who gambles away the family fortune, Liberte abruptly finds himself broke, his only resource a struggling diamond mine in Angola. In a desperate move to recover his wealth and dignity, Liberte travels to Angola to take charge of the remains of his legacy. As he struggles to regain the position he so unceremoniously lost, Liberte squares off against a corrupt mine manager, a dangerous Angolan warlord, and foreign diamond rivals with their eye on a priceless red diamond once owned by his father. Even amongst his difficulties, Liberte finds time to pursue romance—and steamy sex—with humanitarian aid worker and academic Marni Jones, who is distributing food and aid to the poor of Angola. "This book mirrors Robbins' style fairly well," observed Hughes in a Booklist review. With this novel, "Robbins's literary legacy remains very much alive, and his thousands of fans should experience a pleasant sense of deja vu as they race through this latest installment," predicted a Publishers Weekly contributor.

The Betrayers is the first of the posthumous Robbins novels to offer credit to ghost writer and collaborator Junius Podrug. "Robbins fans will not be disappointed in this latest book from the dead author's estate," remarked Hughes in another Booklist review. The novel introduces rich and handsome Nick Cutter, the object of desire for dozens of women and a street-smart survivor. Cutter's story begins in a Russian orphanage after he sees his mother starve to death after the siege of Leningrad. With this traumatic event as a catalyst in his past, Cutter struggles heroically to gain wealth and prestige as a distiller (and bootlegger) of high-quality vodka. His adventures take him to British Honduras, where he lives with lovely Aunt Sarah and her violent husband as they run a sugarcane plantation. While plying the black market for Mayan relics, Cutter discovers that black-strap molasses can also be used to distill vodka. Later, in Colombia, he takes over a sugar plantation and creates a popular type of vodka rumored to increase one's sexual abilities. After a trip to Havana, he is impressed with the country and plans to move his alcohol operations there to make high-quality rum. Castro's takeover forces him to the Dominican Republic, where he falls in love with Luz, the most beautiful woman in the country. When dictator Trujillo is assassinated, however, Luz is accused of being the assassin, and Cutter must make every effort to save the only women he has ever truly loved. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that the novel bears all of Robbins's trademarks, but the book "finds new co-writer Podrug outwriting the hormonal old ghost." The critic found no deviations from Robbins's typical formula and storylines, but indicated that Robbins's longtime fans will still find plenty of reasons to enjoy the book.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 5, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1976.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1994, Donna Seaman, review of

The Raiders, p. 372; June 1, 1995, Sue-Ellen Beauregard, review of The Raiders, p. 1804; November 1, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of The Stallion, p. 435; December 15, 1996, Kathleen Hughes, review of Tycoon, p. 693; March 1, 1998, Kathleen Hughes, review of The Predators, p. 1045; April 1, 2000, Eric Robbins, review of The Secret, p. 1413; October 15, 2001, Kathleen Hughes, review of Never Enough, p. 384; September 1, 2002, Kathleen Hughes, review of Sin City, p. 7; September 1, 2003, Kathleen Hughes, review of Heat of Passion, p. 8; October 1, 2004, Kathleen Hughes, review of The Betrayers, p. 311.

Books and Bookmen, April, 1971, Roger Baker, review of The Betsy.

Chicago Tribune Book World, January 2, 1983, Frederick Busch, review of The Spellbinder.

Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 1949, M.W. Stoer, review of The Dream Merchants.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), January 25, 1986, Joy Fielding, review of The Piranhas.

Journal of Popular Culture, fall, 1974, James B. Lane, review of A Stone for Danny Fisher.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of Never Enough, p. 1157; July 15, 2004, review of The Betrayers, p. 655.

Library Journal, January, 1997, Terrill Persky, review of Tycoon, p. 150.

Life, December 8, 1967, Thomas Thompson, "Close-Up," p. 72.

Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1995, Bettijane Levine, "Older and Wiser," p. E1.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 16, 1986, Dick Lochte, review of The Storyteller.

New York Times, James Kelly, review of A Stone for Danny Fisher;

New York Times Book Review, September 5, 1982, Evan Hunter, review of Spellbinder, pp. 9-10; July 7, 1991, Ed Weiner, review of The Piranhas, p. 7.

People, March 10, 1997, Mark Bautz, review of Tycoon, pp. 32-33; August 31, 1998, Francine Prose, review of The Predators, p. 40.

Pittsburgh Press, March 16, 1975, Leslie Hanscom, interview with Harold Robbins.

Publishers Weekly, October 31, 1994, review of The Raiders, p. 42; February 6, 1995, review of The Raiders, pp. 42-43; November 6, 1995, review of The Stallion, p. 81; December 16, 1996, review of Tycoon, p. 41; March 16, 1998, review of The Predators, p. 53; May 29, 2000, review of The Secret, p. 51; October 8, 2001, review of Never Enough, p. 42; September 30, 2002, review of Sin City, p. 51; September 29, 2003, review of Heat of Passion, p. 42.

Saturday Review of Literature, May 22, 1948, N.L. Rothman, review of Never Love a Stranger; October 29, 1949, Budd Schulberg, review of The Dream Merchants.