Shapiro was born and raised in Brooklyn. He was Jewish.[2] He dropped out of Brooklyn College and began selling jokes to comedians. He eventually wrote for Fred Allen on radio and then for George Burns and Gracie Allen. He followed Burns and Allen to Hollywood and worked on their television show.[3]
"Although I find social institutions, manners, customs and prejudices a bit ridiculous, I do not regard them as a satirist", he told an interviewer in 1962. "I am a humorist. Will Rogers was a satirist, Laurel and Hardy were humorists. Believe me, humor is much harder to write. It was a lot easier for Will Rogers to get a laugh by doing a pun about the Government than it was for Laurel and Hardy to figure out a routine on how to move a piano manually from the basement to the fifth floor."[5]
Shapiro's last project was the television movie Running Against Time, based on his novel A Time to Remember. Broadcast four months after his death from leukemia in Los Angeles, it was dedicated to his memory.[6]
Shapiro died on July 21, 1990, five days after his 65th birthday.
