Sharon Rich is a best-selling author, film historian, and lecturer. She won a national writing award at age 10 for a short story about her family cat, and wrote her first book at 19. Published shortly after her 20th birthday, it was selected by the Entertainment Book Club—making her the youngest author ever to receive that honor.

Over the years, Rich has edited, annotated, or ghostwritten dozens of books, contributed Hollywood-related articles to various magazines, and served as a contributing editor for an opera publication. She has lectured on writing and film history at festivals in the U.S. and U.K., aboard cruises, and for high school classes and fan groups across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

To date, she has authored more than twenty books and written or edited over eighty magazines focused on 1930s singing stars Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Her work compiles extensive research, documentation, interviews, and other detailed source material. MacDonald and Eddy have remained a lifelong passion, partly due to Rich’s close friendship with Jeanette MacDonald’s older sister, actress Blossom Rock. Rock authorized Rich to write a candid biography of her sister’s tragic love affair with Nelson Eddy, telling her: “My generation, we can’t talk about this. Your generation doesn’t care.” The resulting best-selling book, Sweethearts, shattered the carefully crafted Hollywood PR narrative of MacDonald and Eddy’s supposedly blissful marriages to others. others.

Above: from right to left: Sharon, Woody Van Dyke III, Sharon’s daughter Juliet and Woody’s granddaughter.

In addition to interviewing hundreds of individuals from Hollywood’s Golden Age, Sharon Rich gained access to an extraordinary range of archival material: private love letters, unpublished memoirs, Nelson Eddy’s personal scrapbooks and diary entries, hundreds of pages of contemporary eyewitness accounts from fans, FBI files, and Jeanette MacDonald’s unpublished autobiography, along with other private letters and diaries.

Widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on MacDonald and Eddy, Rich has helped preserve their legacy for new generations. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies, young audiences continue to discover the duo’s enduring appeal. The late, beloved TCM host Robert Osborne praised Rich’s book Sweethearts, noting that it “offers considerable proof they may have been secret lovers for years.”

In 1994 Rich was a guest speaker at the American Film Institute in Washington, D.C. AFI also sponsored the launch party for Sweethearts and reviewed the book in their Preview magazine: “That rarity among star bios, an absorbingly written, exhaustively researched, and fully sourced work.” Rich also introduced some of the MacDonald/Eddy films screened in conjunction with the book release.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1995 Rich was awarded a Dame of Merit by the Knights of Malta for her contribution to History and Literature.

The hardcover edition of Sweethearts was also a selection of the Entertainment Book Club; the first softcover edition in 2001 was an online #1 Best Seller for four weeks at Amazon.com’s Booksurge bookstore. The updated 2014 20th Anniversary Edition was #14 on Amazon’s Best Seller list in June 2014. Over the years, it continues to visit the Best Seller list, usually at least once a month. It now has a dedicated website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweethearts was updated and revised in 2014. New documentation has surfaced since that further verified information in the book, including letters and diaries, such as seen below. One is a 1935 letter from Nelson proclaiming his love for Jeanette:

And here’s a page from Jeanette’s 1963 diary in which she confirms the abuse and neglect of her husband, Gene Raymond, when she was so desperately ill in her last years…

About 60 pages were added to the 2014 edition, which is the most current and is the recommended version to read. For those readers who are fans of the Sweethearts book, Rich also keeps up a running blog of additional and new documentation, related news, photos, and interviews, updated frequently at this Sweethearts documentation link.

Some of her other books have been best sellers as well, including Nelson Eddy: The Opera Years. In 2025, both this book and Sweethearts were on Best Seller lists at the same time.

Rich’s most recent book, Tesla: Manhattan Dove to Queens Seagull, was co-authored with D.D. Vujic, based on their movie script, and upon release was a best seller both in the US and Brazil. At their first Barnes & Noble book signing in 2025, all books sold out within a half hour! The book now also has its own Tesla website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rich was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She now lives in Florida. A feature film based on Sweethearts was postponed due to the pandemic in 2020 but is newly being scheduled for production, likely in 2026. Jason Connery is director, and Rich co-wrote the script with Michael Radford of Il Postino, 1984 and The Merchant of Venice fame. More details are available at the film website.