Max Shulman

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Max Shulman (March 14, 1919–August 28, 1988) was a 20th century American writer and humorist best known for his television and short story character Dobie Gillis, as well as for best-selling novels.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life and career
- 1.2 Later career
2 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Max Shulman's earliest published writing was for Ski-U-Mah, the college humor magazine of the University of Minnesota, in the 1930s. His writing often focused on young people, particularly in a collegiate setting.

[edit] Later career

Shulman's works include the novels Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, The Feather Merchants, The Zebra Derby, and Sleep Till Noon. He was also a co-writer, with Robert Paul Smith, of the long-running Broadway play, The Tender Trap, starring Robert Preston, which was later made into a successful movie.

Shulman collegiate character "Dobie Gillis" was the subject of a series of short stories compiled under the title, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which became the basis for a CBS television series of the same name, and had previously been the subject of a film, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953). Shulman also wrote the series' theme song. The same year the series began, Shulman published a Dobie Gillis novel, I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959). After his success with Dobie Gillis, Shulman syndicated a humor column, "On Campus," to over 350 collegiate newspapers at one point.^{[citation needed]}

A later novel, Anyone Got a Match?, satirized both the television and tobacco industries, as well as the South and college football. His last major project was House Calls, which began as a 1978 movie based on one of his stories, and starred Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson; it spun-off the 1979-1981 television series of the same name, starring Wayne Rogers and Lynn Redgrave in the leads. Shulman was the head writer.

Also a screenwriter, Shulman was one of the collaborators on a non-fiction television program, Light's Diamond Jubilee, timed to the 75th anniversary of the invention of the light bulb.