Irwin Shaw

Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose books and stories reached a wide public across radio, theater, film, magazines, and television. Born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff on February 27, 1913, in the South Bronx, New York City, he was the son of Jewish immigrants from Nizhyn, Ukraine. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Brooklyn, where he spent most of his youth. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1934, changing his surname when he entered college, and began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21.

Shaw first made his way through the fast-moving world of 1930s radio, writing scripts for programs including Dick Tracy, The Gumps, and Studio One. His first play, Bury the Dead, appeared in 1936 and told of soldiers killed in battle who refuse to be buried. He also wrote Quiet City, directed by Elia Kazan with incidental music by Aaron Copland, though it closed after two Sunday performances. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for films such as The Talk of the Town, The Commandos Strike at Dawn, and Easy Living.

World War II changed the course and subject matter of his work. Approached by William Wyler to join his film unit, Shaw instead entered the Regular Army because he could not be commissioned as an officer due to his age and 1-A draft status. The Army later reassigned him to the Signal Corps with George Stevens’ film unit, where he became a warrant officer and served as one of four writers attached to Stevens’ command. After the war, he returned to writing, drawing on his European wartime experience for his first novel, The Young Lions, published in 1948.

The Young Lions, about the fate of three soldiers during World War II, became one of the works for which Shaw is best known. It was adapted into a 1958 film starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, though Shaw felt the movie softened some of the serious issues in his book. His other best-known novel, Rich Man, Poor Man, appeared in 1970 and followed two brothers and a sister through the decades after World War II. In 1976, it became a highly successful ABC miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely, ranking third in the seasonal Nielsens and earning 23 Emmy nominations.

Shaw’s life was also marked by the politics of the early Cold War. His 1951 novel The Troubled Air dealt with the rise of McCarthyism. He signed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the contempt of Congress convictions of John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo after House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings. Accused of being a communist by Red Channels, he was placed on the Hollywood blacklist. In 1951, he left the United States for Europe, where he lived for 25 years, mostly in Paris and Switzerland, later saying the blacklist “only glancingly bruised” his career.

Across his lifetime, Shaw’s written works sold more than 14 million copies. He published novels including Lucy Crown, Two Weeks in Another Town, Evening in Byzantium, Bread Upon the Waters, and Acceptable Losses, and he remained highly regarded as a short-story writer, contributing to magazines such as Collier’s, Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Saturday Evening Post. He won two O. Henry Awards, a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant, and three Playboy Awards. Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland, on May 16, 1984, after treatment for prostate cancer. His work still speaks plainly because it follows people under pressure: soldiers, families, writers, workers, and outsiders caught in the hard conditions of their time.