Born March, 1917 in New York City; studied at the National Academy, the Art Students League of New York, the Institute of Fine Arts in New York and elsewhere. Meltzoff studied art history with the idea of becoming an art historian; he came to see, however, that he would not make particularly good art historian, and decided to become an artist instead.

Asa magazine illustrator, he worked for Stars and Stripes(1940-1945), Life, McCall's, The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.

Between 1947 and 1950 he drew about 10 paperback covers for Pocket Books; afterwards, he began to work for Signet. Im the early '50s he met James Avati at the offices of the New American Library, and they decided to share studio space on the topfloor of a building on the corner of Main Street and Broad Street in Red Bank, New Jersey. Meltzoff's 1956 painting "Avati at easel" captures this shared environment wonderfully.

After 1955 Meltzoff made about 10 covers for Fawcett; after 1962 he did five more for Bantam. His personal favorites include ghis Signet covers for science-fiction books by Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury; he was one of the first illustrators to specialize in science-fiction themes.

His signature, either "S.M" or Meltzoff" was often worked into his cover illustrations in interesting and unusual ways, as graffiti on a fence or initials on a mailbox, for example. He wanted his signature to be an actual element within the scene, rather than something foreign to the scene and added onto it. Another frequently recurring image on Meltzoff covers was the artisi's wife, Alice, who he often used as a model.

Today(?) Meltzoff paints underwater scenes of big game fish, either for private sale or as illustrations for National Geographic.

(from The Book of Paperbacks by Piet Schreuders, Virgin Press, 1981)