Editing Irwin Shaw (section)

== Career ==

=== Drama ===
In the 1930s, Shaw wrote scripts for several [[Old-time radio|radio shows]], including ''[[Dick Tracy]]'', ''[[The Gumps (radio)|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:

{{blockquote|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 in literature#Drama|1936]]) was an [[Expressionism|expressionist]] drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. His play ''[[Quiet City (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 (1942 film)|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 (1949 film)|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]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.pinewoodlake.org/ |title=Pinewood Lake website retrieved on 2010-09-10 |access-date=September 12, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727174723/http://www.pinewoodlake.org/ |archive-date=July 27, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Images of America, Trumbull Historical Society, 1997, p. 123</ref>

=== Novels and miniseries ===
''[[The Young Lions (novel)|The Young Lions]]'', Shaw's first novel, was published in [[1948 in literature|1948]]. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 [[The Young Lions (film)|film]]. 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.

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]]''.''<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hauzer |first=Katarzyna |date=2013 |title=So This Is Peace? The Postwar Ventures by John Steinbeck, Irwin Shaw, and Robert Capa |journal=Ad Americam: Journal of American Studies |volume=14 |pages=51–62 |doi=10.12797/AdAmericam.14.2013.14.04 |issn=1896-9461|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Shaw's second novel, ''[[The Troubled Air]]'', chronicling the rise of [[McCarthyism]], was published in [[1951 in literature|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 (film)|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 in literature|1956]]), ''Two Weeks in Another Town'' ([[1960 in literature|1960]]), ''[[Rich Man, Poor Man (novel)|Rich Man, Poor Man]]'' ([[1970 in literature|1970]]) (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled ''[[Beggarman, Thief]]'') and ''Evening in Byzantium''<ref>https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/irwin-shaw-8/evening-in-byzantium/ Retrieved November 24, 2023.</ref> (made into a [[Evening in Byzantium|1978 TV movie]]).

''Rich Man, Poor Man'' was adapted into a [[Rich Man, Poor Man (TV miniseries)|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 September 21, 1976, to March 8, 1977. This was not as successful as the first.<ref name="Rich Man, Poor Man, Museum of Broadcast Communications">[http://www.museum.tv/eotv/richmanpoo.htm RICH MAN, POOR MAN: U.S. Miniseries] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141202104640/http://www.museum.tv/eotv/richmanpoo.htm |date=December 2, 2014 }}, Museum of Broadcast Communications.</ref><ref>''Total Television: A Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present'', Alex McNeil, Penguin Books, 1984.</ref> There was a third sequel ''Beggar Man, Thief'' in 1978, which belatedly included the Jordache's sister Gretchen who had been a prominent character in the original book.<ref name="previously unmentioned sister, Gretchen">[https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1970s/rich-man-poor-man/ Rich Man, Poor Man], Nostagia Central. "A further sequel, Beggar Man, Thief (1978) introduced the Jordaches' previously unmentioned sister, Gretchen."</ref><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1970/10/04/archives/rudolph-tom-and-gretchen-rich-man-poor-man.html Rudolph, Tom and Gretchen], ''New York Times'', W. G. Rogers, October 4, 1970.</ref>

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,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Raičević |first=Svetlana |title=Hleb povrh vode |publisher=Beogradski izdavačko-grafički zavod |year=1987 |isbn=86-13-00192-0 |pages=521–525 |language=sh |trans-title=Bread Upon the Waters |chapter=Beleška o piscu |trans-chapter=Biographical note}}</ref> and ''Acceptable Losses'' (1982).

=== Short stories ===

Shaw was highly regarded as a short story author, contributing to ''[[Collier's Weekly|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 [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] series ''[[Great Performances]]''. Telecast on June 1, 1981. This production was released on DVD in 2002 by Kultur Video.

=== 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.