Robbins Broke Out Of Destitute Circumstances

Abandoned on a church doorstep as an infant, Harold Robbins never met his parents or found out who they were. He was raised in a Catholic orphanage on 10th Avenue in New York City - a neighborhood so rough it was dubbed Hell’s Kitchen.

When he was old enough, he began to leap over the wall, disappearing for hours at a time to investigate life on the seamy streets. He claims no one at the orphanage ever missed him.

After a series of menial jobs - numbers runner, cook, errand boy - he landed in a grocery store, where he noticed a shortage of fresh produce because of fooddistribution problems.

Robbins promptly went into the food business, reportedly earned $1 million by 21, then quickly lost it. He declared bankruptcy and took a shipping-clerk job in the New York warehouse of Universal Pictures. It was there that Robbins happened to read a novel the studio had bought. It was so bad, he told a Universal vice president, that even he - an uneducated orphan - could write better. The executive said, “So do it.”

The resulting 600-page novel, “Never Love a Stranger,” was immediately accepted by Alfred A. Knopf for publication.