Irving Shulman

Irving Shulman (May 21, 1913 - March 23, 1995) was an American author and screenwriter whose works were adapted into movies. His books included The Amboy Dukes, Cry Tough and The Square Trap, all of which were adapted into movies.

Shulman wrote the early film treatment for Rebel Without a Cause. Stewart Stern did the screenplay based on the story concepts of Shulman and director Nicholas Ray. Later, Shulman used his treatment as the basis for his 1956 novel Children of the Dark.

Published in 1947, The Amboy Dukes examined the grim and sometimes short lives of teenage street criminals in Brooklyn during World War II. It sold five million copies and led to his being hired as a screenwriter by Warner Bros. Two subsequent novels, Cry Tough! and The Big Brokers, followed the equally grim experiences of the some of the characters who survived The Amboy Dukes, but with somewhat less emphasis on their Jewishness. In The Amboy Dukes two members of the gang accidentally shoot and kill one of their teachers—a third member of the Dukes kills one of them before the story is over. In Cry Tough, another member of the Dukes, Mitchell Wolf, returns from prison and after trying to "go straight" becomes a member of an organized crime family. In The Big Brokers, Wolf and two other alumnae of the Dukes are sent to Nevada to run one of the crime family's casinos in Las Vegas. Shulman's message in all three books is that crime does not pay.

In the 1960s, Shulman wrote biographies of Jean Harlow and Rudolph Valentino, and a novelization of the film West Side Story.

Shulman died of Alzheimer's disease in 1995.