His parents were well-educated Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire, his father from Odessa and his mother from Neshwies (Nyasvizh), south of Minsk.

Robbins worked a variety of jobs, including errand boy, bookies' runner, and inventory clerk in a grocers.

The Dream Merchants (1949) was a novel about the American film industry, from its beginning to the sound era in which Robbins blended his own life experiences with history, melodrama, sex, and glossy high society into a fast-moving story.

[8] Among his best-known books is The Carpetbaggers (1961) – featuring a protagonist who was a loose composite of Howard Hughes, Bill Lear, Harry Cohn, and Louis B.

[11] The book was released in 1966 and was based on Robbins's experiences living in South America, including three months spent in the mountains of Colombia with a group of bandits.

[citation needed] Robbins's editors included Cynthia White and Michael Korda and his literary agent was Paul Gitlin.

[12] In July 1989, Robbins was involved in a literary controversy when the trade periodical Publishers Weekly revealed that around four pages from Robbins's novel The Pirate (1974) had been lifted without permission and integrated into Kathy Acker's novel The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1975), which had recently been re-published in the UK in a selection of early works by Acker titled Young Lust (1989).

What is known is that with reported worldwide sales of 750 million, Harold Robbins sold more books than J.K. Rowling, earned and spent $50m during his lifetime, and was as much a part of the sexual and social revolution as the pill, Playboy and pot.

In March 1965, he had three novels on the British paperback bestseller list – Where Love Has Gone at No.1, The Carpetbaggers at No.3 and The Dream Merchants in the sixth spot.Robbins is mentioned by name (along with Jacqueline Susann) in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home by Admiral James T. Kirk.

In the movie Educating Rita, Dr Bryant, played by Michael Caine said he doubts that the examiner of the English Literature course has read Where Love Has Gone.

[1] He spent a great deal of time on the French Riviera and at Monte Carlo until his death from respiratory heart failure, at the age of 81 in Palm Springs, California.