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Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw
	; Irwin Shaw in his CUNY years.;
Born	Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff; (1913-02-27)February 27, 1913; Bronx, New York City, United States
Died	May 16, 1984(1984-05-16) (aged 71); Davos, Switzerland
Occupation	Playwright, Screenwriter, Novelist
Nationality	American
Notable works	; Bury the Dead (1936); The Young Lions (1948); Rich Man, Poor Man (1969); Beggarman, Thief (1977)
Notable awards	O. Henry Award (1944, 1945); National Institute of Arts and; Letters Grant (1946); Playboy Award (1964, 1970, 1979); Honorary Doctorate, Brooklyn College
Spouse	Marian Edwards (1916-1996)
Website
	www.irwinshaw.org

Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 – May 16, 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions (1948), about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, made into a film of the same name starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), about the fate of two siblings after World War II. In 1976, it was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely.

Personal life

Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff in the South Bronx, New York City, to Jewish immigrants from Russia.^[1] His parents were Rose and Will. His younger brother, David Shaw, became a noted Hollywood producer and writer.^[2] Shortly after Irwin's birth, the Shamforoffs moved to Brooklyn. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college. He spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.

During World War II Shaw was approached by William Wyler to join his film unit. Unable to be commissioned due to his age and 1-A draft status,^[3] Shaw decided to enter the regular army. Noting his background the Army sent to him to George Stevens film unit,^[4] one of four writers attached to Stevens' command where he was commissioned a warrant officer.

Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16, 1984, aged 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.^[5]

Career

Drama

Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows, including Dick Tracy, The Gumps and Studio One. He recaptured this period of his life in his short story "Main Currents of American Thought," about a hack radio writer grinding out one script after another while calculating the number of words equal to the rent money:

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Furniture, and a hundred and thirty-seven dollars. His mother had always wanted a good dining-room table. She didn't have a maid, she said, so he ought to get her a dining room table. How many words for a dining-room table?

Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936) was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. His play Quiet City, directed by Elia Kazan and with incidental music by Aaron Copland, closed after two Sunday performances.

During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including The Talk of the Town (a comedy about civil liberties), The Commandos Strike at Dawn (based on a C.S. Forester story about commandos in occupied Norway) and Easy Living (about a football player unable to enter the game due to a medical condition). Shaw married Marian Edwards (daughter of well-known screen actor Snitz Edwards). They had one son, Adam Shaw, born in 1950, himself a writer of magazine articles and non-fiction.

Shaw summered at the Pine Brook Country Club, located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, which became the 1936 summer home of the Group Theatre (New York), whose roster included Elia Kazan, Harold Clurman, Harry Morgan, John Garfield, Frances Farmer, Will Geer, Clifford Odets and Lee J. Cobb.^[6]^[7]

Novels and Miniseries

The Young Lions, Shaw's first novel, was published in 1948. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 film. Shaw was not happy with the film.

Shaw's second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. He was among those who signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo convictions for contempt of Congress, resulting from hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Accused of being a communist by the Red Channels publication, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In 1951 he left the United States and went to Europe, where he lived for 25 years, mostly in Paris and Switzerland. He later claimed that the blacklist "only glancingly bruised" his career. During the 1950s he wrote several more screenplays, including Desire Under the Elms (based on Eugene O'Neill's play) and Fire Down Below (about a tramp boat in the Caribbean).

While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown (1956), Two Weeks in Another Town (1960), Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled Beggarman, Thief) and Evening in Byzantium^[8] (made into a 1978 TV movie).

Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries with six 2-hour episodes shown for February 1 to March 15, 1976. The series ranked third in the seasonal Nielsens and garnered twenty-three Emmy nominations. A further adaptation, which Shaw had very little to do with, Rich Man, Poor Man--Book II was aired from Sept. 21, 1976, to March 8, 1977. This was not as successful as the first series.^[9]^[10]

His novel The Top of the Hill was made into a TV movie about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau, and Sonny Bono.^[11]

His last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters (1981) and Acceptable Losses (1982).

Short stories

Shaw was highly regarded as a short story author, contributing to Collier's, Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines; and 63 of his best stories were collected in Short Stories: Five Decades (Delacorte, 1978), reprinted in 2000 as a 784-page University of Chicago Press paperback. Among his noted short stories are: "Sailor Off The Bremen", "The Eighty-Yard Run", and "Tip On A Dead Jockey". Three of his stories ("The Girls in Their Summer Dresses", "The Monument", "The Man Who Married a French Wife") were dramatized for the PBS series Great Performances. Telecast on June 1, 1981. This production was released on DVD in 2002 by Kultur Video.

In 1950, Shaw wrote a book on Israel with photos by Robert Capa named Report on Israel.

Awards

During his lifetime Shaw won a number of awards, including two O. Henry Awards, a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant, and three Playboy Awards.

Works

Novels

The Young Lions (1948)

The Troubled Air (1951)

Lucy Crown (1956)

Two Weeks in Another Town (1960)

Voices of a Summer Day (1965)

Rich Man, Poor Man (1969/1970) (Portions of this novel first appeared in Playboy in a slightly different form.)

Evening in Byzantium (1973)

Night Work (1975)

Beggarman, Thief (1977)

The Top of the Hill (1979)

Bread Upon the Waters (1981)

Acceptable Losses (1982)

Short-story collections

Sailor off the Bremen and other Stories (1939)

Welcome to the City, and other Stories (1942)

Act of Faith, and other stories (1946)

The Girls in Their Summer Dresses

Mixed Company. Collected Short Stories (1950)

Tip on a Dead Jockey, and other stories (1957)

Selected Short Stories (1961)

Love on a Dark Street, and other stories (1965)

Retreat and other stories (1970)

God Was Here, But He Left Early (1973)

Short Stories: Five Decades (1978)

Nonfiction

Report on Israel (1950, with Robert Capa)

In the Company of Dolphins (1964)

Paris! Paris! (1976)

Plays

Bury the Dead, New York, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, April 1936.

Siege, New York, Longacre Theatre, December 1937.

The Gentle People, New York, Belasco Theatre, January 1939.

Quiet City New York, Belasco Theatre, March 1939.

Retreat to Pleasure, New York, Belasco Theatre, 1940.

Sons and Soldiers, New York, Morosco Theatre, May 1943.

The Assassin, New York, National Theatre, October 1945.

The Survivors, (with Peter Viertel) New York, Playhouse Theatre, January 1948.

Children From Their Games, New York, Morosco Theatre, April 1963.

A Choice of Wars, Glasgow, Scotland, Glasgow Citizens Theatre, 1967.

Screenplays

The Big Game, RKO, 1936.

Commandos Strike at Dawn, Columbia, 1942.

The Hard Way, Warner Bros., 1942.

The Talk of the Town, RKO, 1942.

Take One False Step, Universal, 1949.

Easy Living, RKO, 1949.

I Want You, RKO, 1951.

Act of Love, United Artists, 1953.

Ulysses, Paramount, 1954.

Fire Down Below, Columbia, 1957.

Desire Under the Elms, Paramount, 1958.

This Angry Age, Columbia, 1958.

The Big Gamble, Fox, 1961.

In the French Style, Columbia, 1963.

Survival, United Film, 1968.

References

^ "Transport Group to Present Revival of Shaw's 'Bury the Dead' Starting 10/31". Broadwayworld.com. Retrieved 2013-12-11.

^ "Golden Era Scribe David Shaw Dies". Emmys. August 20, 2007. Retrieved January 15, 2014.

^ Miller, Gabriel William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Director University Press of Kentucky, 19 Jul. 2013

^ Harris, Mark Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War Canongate Books, 20 Feb. 2014

^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-10-22. Retrieved 2013-12-11.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)

^ "Pinewood Lake website retrieved on 2010-09-10". Archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2010-09-12.

^ Images of America, Trumbull Historical Society, 1997, p. 123

^ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/irwin-shaw-8/evening-in-byzantium/

^ RICH MAN, POOR MAN: U.S. Miniseries, Museum of Broadcast Communications.

^ Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present, Alex McNeil, Penguin Books, 1984.

^ ""Top of the Hill" at IMDB".

External links

Brooklyn College Archives

LitWeb: Irwin Shaw

George Plimpton; John Phillips (Winter 1953). "Irwin Shaw, The Art of Fiction No. 4". The Paris Review.

Lucas Matthiessen; Willie Morris; John Marquand (Spring 1979). "Irwin Shaw, The Art of Fiction No. 4 (Continued)". The Paris Review.

Irwin Shaw on IMDb Retrieved on 2008-02-07

Irwin Shaw at the Internet Broadway Database

[1] "Transport Group to Present Revival of Shaw's 'Bury the Dead' Starting 10/31". Broadwayworld.com. Retrieved 2013-12-11.

[davidshaw-2] "Golden Era Scribe David Shaw Dies". Emmys. August 20, 2007. Retrieved January 15, 2014.

[3] Miller, Gabriel William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Director University Press of Kentucky, 19 Jul. 2013

[4] Harris, Mark Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War Canongate Books, 20 Feb. 2014

[5] "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-10-22. Retrieved 2013-12-11.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)

[6] "Pinewood Lake website retrieved on 2010-09-10". Archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2010-09-12.

[7] Images of America, Trumbull Historical Society, 1997, p. 123

[8] ttps://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/irwin-shaw-8/evening-in-byzantium/

[Rich_Man,_Poor_Man,_Museum_of_Broadcast_Communications-9] RICH MAN, POOR MAN: U.S. Miniseries, Museum of Broadcast Communications.

[10] Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present, Alex McNeil, Penguin Books, 1984.

[11] ""Top of the Hill" at IMDB".

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