Editing Irwin Shaw (section)

=== 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>