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Shulman, Max (1919–1988)

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Shulman at his desk as editor of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, ca. 1941. From a 1941 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Shulman at his desk as editor of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine, Ski-U-Mah, ca. 1941. From a 1941 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Born and raised in St. Paul, educated there and at the University of Minnesota, Max Shulman published seven successful novels and two collections of short stories, wrote or co-wrote three Broadway plays and five Hollywood movies, and produced two popular TV series, most famously The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Shulman was born on the old Jewish West Side of St. Paul, the son of Abraham and Bessie (Karchmar) Shulman, recent immigrants from Belarus. His childhood was not comfortable; his father, a house painter, rarely worked during the 1930s, and Shulman wrote later that his mother blamed his father for the Depression. He grew up at 701 Selby in the then heavily Jewish Selby–Dale neighborhood, attended public schools, and graduated twenty-sixth in his class of 665 from St. Paul’s Central High School in 1936.

He went on to the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism (he graduated in 1942); wrote a humor column, “Sauce for the Gander,” for the Minnesota Daily; and wrote for, then edited, the university’s monthly humor magazine, Ski-U-Mah. An editor from the Doubleday publishing company happened upon his work and urged him to try a novel. Thus at age twenty-four Shulman brought forth a best-seller, Barefoot Boy With Cheek, a collection of funny names and gags, its thin plot and frantic action set at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The hero is Asa Hearthrug from Whistlestop, Minnesota; he pursues two women—campus radical Yetta Samovar and beautiful sorority sister Noblesse Oblige. His football-star fraternity brother is Eino Fflliikkiinnenn.

From the University of Minnesota Shulman went into the army, where he produced two more comic novels: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). A Time magazine reviewer called Shulman’s writing “an aimless gaggle of giggles,” but the novels sold well. He moved to New York, where Barefoot Boy became a Broadway musical starring Red Buttons and Nancy Walker.

In the 1950s Shulman produced two more novels, Sleep Till Noon (1950) and Rally Round The Flag, Boys (1958), and another Broadway play—The Tender Trap, starring Robert Preston and Kim Hunter. He also wrote movies: Confidentially Connie, with Van Johnson and Janet Leigh; Half a Hero, with Red Skelton; and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, with Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, and Bob Fosse. Rally Round The Flag became a movie also, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward (though Shulman did not write the screenplay), as did The Tender Trap, with Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. Another play, How Now, Dow Jones, had a short Broadway run in 1967, and another novel, Anyone Got a Match?, came out in 1964. Shulman eventually moved to southern California and into television.

Shulman’s first short story collection, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, appeared in 1951. Though the TV series based on the stories appears to be set in California, all of the original Dobie Gillis stories take place at the University of Minnesota. Dobie is usually from St. Paul, but sometimes from Blue Earth or Koochiching County. Shulman produced the TV series and wrote about a quarter of the episodes. Later, Shulman wrote the movie House Calls (1978), starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson. It too became a TV series.

Though Shulman grew up in a Jewish household and neighborhood, nothing Jewish appeared in his work until his last novel, Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971). There the hero, Morris Katz, is a kind of Jewish Dobie Gillis, who lives at 701 Selby Avenue in St. Paul with a fictional family identical to Shulman’s real one. Morris, girl-crazy like Dobie, pursues a Jewish girl, homely but rich, and a Catholic girl, pretty but poor. Shulman later said that Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint freed him to bring Jewishness into his writing. Many critics consider Potatoes Are Cheaper his best novel.

In 2020, Shulman's books are out of print on paper, but available as e-books. The movies—except possibly House Calls—have also fallen out of popularity. We do not know how many books Shulman sold, but it seems likely that, among writers born and raised in St. Paul, only F. Scott Fitzgerald has sold more. Fitzgerald sold more books; Shulman produced more laughs.

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Barron, James. “Max Shulman, Humorist, Is Dead: Chronicler of Postwar Life.” New York Times, August 29, 1988.

Evans, Glen. “An Exclusive Interview with Max Shulman.” Writer’s Digest 52, no. 3 (March 1972): 20–21.

Trimble, Steve, and Paul Nelson. “Three Jewish Writers.” Ramsey County History 54, no. 3 (Fall 2019): 1–12.
https://publishing.rchs.com/publishing/magazine/ramsey-county-history-magazine-volume-54-3-fall-2019

Related Images

Shulman at his desk as editor of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, ca. 1941. From a 1941 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Shulman at his desk as editor of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, ca. 1941. From a 1941 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Max Shulman, at right, on the cover of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, 1942. From a 1942 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Max Shulman, at right, on the cover of the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine Ski-U-Mah, 1942. From a 1942 issue of Ski-U-Mah, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Cover of Max Shulman’s Barefoot Boy With Cheek (Doubleday, Doran, 1943).
Cover of Max Shulman’s Barefoot Boy With Cheek (Doubleday, Doran, 1943).
Cover of Max Shulman's Zebra Derby (Doubleday, 1946).
Cover of Max Shulman's Zebra Derby (Doubleday, 1946).
Cover of Playbill for the musical adaptation of Max Shulman's novel Barefoot Boy with Cheek, which opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway in 1947.
Cover of Playbill for the musical adaptation of Max Shulman's novel Barefoot Boy with Cheek, which opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on Broadway in 1947.
Max and Carol Shulman, ca. 1940s. From a 1940s issue of Ski-U-Mah, the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Max and Carol Shulman, ca. 1940s. From a 1940s issue of Ski-U-Mah, the University of Minnesota’s humor magazine, available on microfilm at the Minnesota Historical Society.
title page of the 1951 edition of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, by Max Shulman. The book was first published in 1943.
title page of the 1951 edition of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, by Max Shulman. The book was first published in 1943.
Poster for The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, the 1953 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Max Shulman.
Poster for The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, the 1953 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Max Shulman.
The poster for Confidentially Connie, the 1953 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Max Shulman.
The poster for Confidentially Connie, the 1953 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Max Shulman.
Max Shulman (seated) on the set of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, with Dwayne Hickman (left) and Bob Denver (above), ca. 1960, courtesy of Martha Rose Shulman.
Max Shulman (seated) on the set of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, with Dwayne Hickman (left) and Bob Denver (above), ca. 1960, courtesy of Martha Rose Shulman.
Cover Max Shulman's of Potatoes Are Cheaper (Doubleday, 1971).
Cover Max Shulman's of Potatoes Are Cheaper (Doubleday, 1971).
Max Shulman in the 1970s, courtesy of Martha Rose Shulman.
Max Shulman in the 1970s, courtesy of Martha Rose Shulman.

Turning Point

In 1942 an editor at Doubleday urges Shulman to try writing a novel. He does, and the result, Barefoot Boy in Cheek, turns into a best-seller.

Chronology

1919

Max Shulman is born on Indiana Street in St. Paul’s West Side Flats.

1921

The Shulman family relocates to 701 Selby Avenue, one block west of Dale Street.

1933

Shulman publishes his first piece, “Goldie Lox and Der Three Chicago Cubs,” in his junior high school newspaper, the Marshall Spokesman.

1936

Shulman publishes “Little White Way,” a description of his Selby Avenue neighborhood, in the Central High School literary magazine.

1942

Now married to Carol Rees, Shulman graduates from the University of Minnesota and enters the US Army Air Corps, where he serves stateside and finds time to write two novels, The Feather Merchants and The Zebra Derby.

1943

Shulman publishes his first novel, Barefoot Boy With Cheek.

1947

Barefoot Boy With Cheek becomes a Broadway musical starring Red Buttons and Nancy Walker.

1951

Shulman introduces his most durable character in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, a short story collection.

1953

Three Shulman screenplays become Hollywood movies: The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, starring Bobby Van, Debbie Reynolds, and Bob Fosse; Half a Hero, starring Red Skelton and Jean Hagen; and Confidentially Connie

1959

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, starring Dwayne Hickman, Bob Denver, Frank Faylen, and Florida Friebus, begins its four-year run on television.

1971

Shulman publishes his last novel, Potatoes Are Cheaper.

1978

Shulman’s last movie, House Calls, debuts. It spun off a TV series, 1979–1982, starring Wayne Rogers, Shulman’s friend David Wayne, and Lynn Redgrave. Shulman wrote two of the episodes.