Irwin Shaw
Irwin Shaw, original name Irwin Gilbert
Shamforoff (b. Feb. 27, 1913, New York,
N.Y., U.S.—d. May 16, 1984, Davos,
Switz.), prolific American playwright,
screenwriter, and author of critically
acclaimed short stories and best-selling
novels.
Shaw studied at Brooklyn College (B.A.,
1934) and at age 21 began his career by
writing the scripts of the popular Andy
Gump and Dick Tracy radio shows. He
wrote his pacifist one-act play Bury the
Dead for a 1935 contest; though it lost,
the play appeared on Broadway the next
year, the first of his 12 plays that
were professionally produced. He wrote
the first of his many screenplays, The
Big Game, in 1936. Throughout the later
1930s popular magazines such as The New
Yorker and Esquire published his short
stories; they were praised for their
plotting, their naturalness of
narration, and especially their
characterization.
Shaw’s experiences in the U.S. Army in
Europe during World War II led to his
writing The Young Lions (1948; filmed
1958), a novel about three young
soldiers—one German and two Americans—in
wartime; it became a best-seller, and
thereafter Shaw devoted most of the rest
of his career to writing novels. Among
the best known of his 12 novels are Two
Weeks in Another Town (1960), Evening in
Byzantium (1973), and Beggarman, Thief
(1977). Probably his most popular novel,
though it was derided by critics, was
Rich Man, Poor Man (1970), which was the
source of the first television
miniseries. Shaw’s novels and stories
were the basis of several movies,
including Take One False Step (1949),
Tip on a Dead Jockey (1958), and Three
(1969).
