Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man. Beggarman, Thief

In 1951, wrongly suspected of Communist sympathies, Shaw moved to Europe with his wife and six-month-old son. In Paris, he was neighbors with journalist Art Buchwald and friends with the great French writers, photographers, actors, and moviemakers of his generation, including Joseph Kessel, Robert Capa, Simone Signoret, and Louis Malle. In Rome, Shaw gave author William Styron his wedding lunch, doctored screenplays, walked with director Federico Fellini on the Via Veneto, and got the idea for his novel Two Weeks in Another Town (1960).

Finally, he settled in the small Swiss village of Klosters and continued writing screenplays, stage plays, and novels. Rich Man, Poor Man (1970) and Beggerman, Thief (1977) were made into the first famous television miniseries. Nightwork (1975) will soon be a major motion picture. Shaw died in the shadow of the Swiss peaks that had inspired Thomas Mann’s great novel The Magic Mountain .

Shaw as a young soldier crossing North Africa from Algiers to Cairo in 1943.

Shaw’s US Army record.

Shaw just after D-Day in Normandy, France, in 1944.

A few weeks after D-Day, Shaw and his Signal Corps film crew liberate Mont Saint-Michel.

A 1944 letter from Shaw to his wife, Marian, describing the “taking” of Mont Saint-Michel, as well as a nerve-wracking night under a cathedral when he almost shot a group of monks, believing them to be Germans.

Shaw as a warrant-officer in Austria in 1945, with Signal Corps Captain Josh Logan (left) and Colonel Anatole Litvak (center), who became his lifelong friends.

Shaw, Marian, and their son, Adam, on the terrace of the newly built Chalet Mia in Klosters, Switzerland, in 1957.

Shaw at home with Marian at Chalet Mia, Klosters, in 1958.

Shaw (center) skiing in Klosters in 1960 with (left to right) Noel Howard (an actor), an unidentified Hollywood producer, Marian Shaw, Jacques Charmoz (a French World War II pilot, cartoonist, and painter), and Jacqueline Tesseron.

Shaw in Klosters in 1960 with (from left to right) Kathy Parrish, her husband Robert Parrish (an Academy Award–winning film editor and director), and Peter Viertel (a screenwriter, novelist, and Shaw’s coauthor for the play The Survivors ). Shaw’s friendship with Viertel started before the war, when they both lived in Malibu.

Shaw with Irving P. “Swifty” Lazar, the legendary talent agent who represented him, in Evian, France, in 1963.

Shaw playing tennis in Klosters in 1964.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Portions of Rich Man, Poor Man appeared in PLAYBOY in a slightly different form.

Portions of Beggarman, Thief have been previously published in Playboy and Family Circle in somewhat different form.

Rich Man, Poor Man Copyright © 1969, 1970 by Irwin Shaw

Beggarman, Thief Copyright © 1977 by Irwin Shaw

Cover design by Andrea Uva

978-1-4804-6590-9

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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EBOOKS BY IRWIN SHAW

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