How to Succeed in Hollywood Without Really Trying P.S. - You Can't

Autobiography of an award-winning screenwriter

Mel Shavelson is one of Hollywood's triple-threat Writer-Director-Producers, and a two-time Academy Award Nominee for his original screenplays, which he also directed. He served three terms as President of the Writers Guild of America, West, and is the recipient of its highest honor, the Laurel Award for Screen Writing.

He has written, alone or in collaboration, over thirty-five feature motion pictures, directed twelve of them, and created for television two Emmy Award-winning series.

He is the author of two novels and four works of non-fiction, including the NY Times best-seller, Don't Shoot, It's Only Me, this last in collaboration with Bob Hope.

Among the stars he has directed in feature films are - in alphabetical order, please! - Lucille Ball, Yul Brynner, James Cagney, Vittorio De Sica, Angie Dickinson, Kirk Douglas, Robert Duvall, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Barbara Harris, Charlton Heston, Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, Jack Lemmon, Sophia Loren, Paul Newman, Lee Remick, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, and Joanne Woodward.

Among the films he both wrote and directed are Houseboat, The Seven Little Foys, The Five Pennies, It Started in Naples, On the Double, A New Kind of Love, Cast a Giant Shadow, The War Between Men and Women, and Yours, Mine and Ours.

Recently he served on the faculty of USC's Master of Professional Writing Program.

He has often said, "There are a lot of good things about growing older - and I wish I could remember what they were."