15 Facts About Irwin Shaw

1.

Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies.

2.

Irwin Shaw is best known for two of his novels: The Young Lions, 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, 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.

3.

Irwin Shaw spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.

4.

Unable to be commissioned as an officer due to his age and 1-A draft status, Irwin Shaw decided to enter the Regular Army.

5.

Irwin Shaw was one of four writers attached to Stevens' command, in which he became a warrant officer.

6.

Irwin Shaw died in Davos, Switzerland on May 16,1984, at age 71, after undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.

7.

Irwin Shaw 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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8.

Irwin Shaw's mother had always wanted a good dining-room table.

9.

Irwin Shaw didn't have a maid, she said, so he ought to get her a dining room table.

10.

Irwin Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried.

11.

Irwin Shaw was not happy with the film, feeling it soft-pedaled some of the serious issues from his book, but it did well at the box office.

12.

Irwin Shaw was among those who signed a petition asking the US 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.

13.

Irwin Shaw later claimed that the blacklist "only glancingly bruised" his career.

14.

Irwin 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, reprinted in 2000 as a 784-page University of Chicago Press paperback.

15.

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