Irwin Shaw was born Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff to Russian immigrants on February 27, 1913, in New York City. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1934 and began writing for popular radio shows, including “Dick Tracy,” “The Gumps,” and “Studio One.” His first play, the antiwar drama BURY THE DEAD, was produced in 1936. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Shaw continued to write successful plays and began publishing short stories. His plays include SIEGE (1937), QUIET CITY (1939), THE GENTLE PEOPLE (1939), RETREAT TO PLEASURE (1940), SONS AND SOLDIERS (1943), THE ASSASSIN (1945), and THE SURVIVORS (1948), written with Peter Viertel. His short stories appeared in “The New Yorker” and “Esquire” and were published in the collections “Sailor Off the Bremen” (1939) and “Welcome to the City” (1941). Shaw’s first novel, “The Young Lions” (1948), was inspired by his experiences in Europe during World War II and was a major success. It was adapted into a successful film in 1958. After he published his second novel, “The Troubled Air” (1951), an account of the rise of McCarthyism, Shaw was placed on the Hollywood blacklist. He moved to Europe, where he remained for the next twenty-five years. There, he wrote the screenplays for “Desire Under the Elms” (1958), based on the play by Eugene O’Neill, and “Fire Down Below” (1957). He also published the novels “Lucy Crown” (1956), “Two Weeks in Another Town” (1960), “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1970), “Evening in Byzantium” (1973), and “Acceptable Losses” (1982). Shaw won two O. Henry awards, a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant, and three Playboy Awards. He died in Davos, Switzerland, on May 16, 1984.
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