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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, which was 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 brothers and a sister in the post-World War II decades, which in 1976 was made into a popular miniseries starring Peter Strauss, Nick Nolte, and Susan Blakely.
He began screenwriting in 1935 at age 21. In 1939 he married actress and producer Marian Edwards, daughter of silent film actor Snitz Edwards. The couple divorced in 1967, remarrying two years before Irwin's death in 1984.
During World War II, he was approached by William Wyler to join his film unit. Unable to be commissioned as an officer due to his age and 1-A draft status,Miller, Gabriel William Wyler: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Most Celebrated Director University Press of Kentucky, July 19, 2013 Shaw decided to enter the Regular Army. Later, the Army, noting his background, reassigned him to the Signal Corps with George Stevens' film unit.Harris, Mark Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War Canongate Books, February 20, 2014 He was one of four writers attached to Stevens' command, in which he became a warrant officer. After the war, he returned to his career as a writer.
Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16, 1984, at age 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936), was an Expressionism 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 keep playing 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.Images of America, Trumbull Historical Society, 1997, p. 123
In 1950 Shaw published Report on Israel, a journalistic book dealing with the situation in the state around the time of its founding with photographs by Robert Capa .
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
Retrieved November 24, 2023. (made into a 1978 TV movie).
Rich Man, Poor Man was adapted into a highly successful ABC television miniseries with six two-hour episodes which aired from February 1 to March 15, 1976. The series ranked third in the seasonal Nielsens and garnered 23 Emmy nominations. A further adaptation, which Shaw had very little to do with, Rich Man, Poor Man--Book II, aired from September 21, 1976, to March 8, 1977. This was not as successful as the first. 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. There was a third sequel Beggar Man, Thief in 1978, which belatedly included the Jordaches' sister Gretchen who had been a prominent character in the original book. Rich Man, Poor Man, Nostagia Central. "A further sequel, Beggar Man, Thief (1978) introduced the Jordaches' previously unmentioned sister, Gretchen." Rudolph, Tom and Gretchen, New York Times, W. G. Rogers, October 4, 1970.
His novel The Top of the Hill (1979) was made into a TV movie about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980, starring Wayne Rogers, Adrienne Barbeau, and Sonny Bono.
His last two novels were Bread Upon the Waters (1981), a realist novel dealing with the socioeconomic conditions of 20th-century New York, and Acceptable Losses (1982).
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