George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish writer. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.

His best known works are his plays, some of which were made into movies. He wrote many plays about political problems, and those polemic plays sometimes gave him enemies. For example, he wrote a play about prostitution, and another about women's rights.

His play Saint Joan was made into a movie in 1957.

His play Pygmalion was made into a movie twice. The first Pygmalion movie won him an Academy Award for the best adapted screenplay, 1938. Later, the play was also made into a musical play called My Fair Lady. The movie based on that musical won 8 Academy Awards in 1964.

Shaw was the first person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award.

Shaw also wrote musical criticism using the pseudonym (made-up name) Corno di Bassetto (which means: Basset horn).

In 1962, his play Androcles and the Lion was printed in a two-language version. On one side of the book, the text is written using regular English. On the other side, it is written using the Shaw alphabet.

He also wrote a play called Caesar and Cleopatra.

Personal views
Shaw was a vegetarian, did not drink alcohol, and spoke strongly in favor of socialism and women's rights. He was also interested in making the English language easier to spell. In his will, he left money to be used to make a new alphabet. He wanted the new alphabet to have at least 40 letters, so that each sound could be spelled with just one letter.

Shaw delivered speeches supporting the idea of eugenics (selected breeding to improve the human race) and he became a noted figure in the movement in England. He sometimes exaggerated his arguments to an extreme to expose the cruelty that might come from this.

References

Category:Academy Award winning writers
Category:Accidental deaths from falls
Category:Deaths from renal failure
Category:Irish novelists
Category:Music critics
Category:Nobel Prize in Literature winners
Category:Writers from Dublin
Category:Irish playwrights
Category:Royal Society of Literature
Category:Socialists
Category:1856 births
Category:1950 deaths
Category:Irish Nobel Prize winners