Born in Dublin, Ireland, of Protestant stock. After a false start in nineteenth-century fashion as a novelist, he made a reputation as a journalist critic of books, pictures, music and drama. Meanwhile he had plunged into the Socialist revival of the 1880s and come out as one of the leaders who made the Fabian Society famous, figuring prominently not only as a pamphleteer and platform orator, but as a serious economist and philosopher, publishing major essays on Ibsen and Wagner. He broke out in a new direction in 1892 as a playwright, although it was not until some 12 years later that the opposition he had always to face at first was overcome sufficiently to establish him as an irresistible force in the theatre. The author of 53 plays, hundreds of essays, reviews, and letters and several books, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926. (This makes him the first -- and to date, only -- person to receive both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar®.) Shaw worked on the screenplay of his successful London hit Pygmalion for its British film production. "Not the least regard will be paid to American ideas except to avoid them as much as possible," he announced, but producer Gabriel Pascal persuaded him to let Professor Higgins get the girl in the end. And Newsweek favored Shaw's revisions: "The film surpasses the play." When it came to Oscar time, Shaw stayed in England rather than attend the ceremonies. Novelist Lloyd C. Douglas, author of Magnificent Obsession, couldn't resist making a wisecrack when he announced that Shaw had won the Oscar for the screenplay of PYGMALION: "Mr. Shaw's story now is as original as it was three thousand years ago," Douglas observed. Shaw put up a fuss, furious that the Academy was sending him anything at all. "It's an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before -- and it's very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England," the playwright declared. The Academy sent Shaw the Oscar anyway, and Mary Pickford reported that when she visited him she saw the statuette proudly displayed on the mantle.  Writing (Screenplay) 1938: PYGMALION (w. Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis & W. P. Lipscomb) 1 nomination, 1 Award