NEW YORK – Best-selling writer Ira Levin, whose genre-hopping novels such as the horror classic "Rosemary’s Baby" and the Nazi thriller "The Boys From Brazil" provided meaty movie roles for Mia Farrow and Laurence Olivier, has died of a heart attack, his agent said Tuesday. He was 78.
Levin, who also wrote for television and Broadway during his long career, passed away in his Manhattan apartment on Monday, agent Phyllis Westberg said.
Long before authors such as Stephen King had their books routinely turned into movies, Levin watched his novels move inexorably to the big screen. Besides "Rosemary’s Baby" with Farrow and "The Boys From Brazil" with Olivier, Levin’s novels "The Stepford Wives," "Sliver" and "A Kiss Before Dying" all received the Hollywood treatment.
His long-running 1978 play "Deathtrap" was also made into a Sidney Lumet-directed film, starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve.
Levin’s page-turning books were once compared by Newsweek writer Peter S. Frescott to a bag of popcorn: "Utterly without nutritive value and probably fattening, yet there’s no way to stop once you’ve started."
Born in the Bronx, Levin’s father was hopeful his son would follow him into the family toy business. But by age 15, Levin determined that he wanted a career in writing; in his senior year at New York University, Levin won the $200 second place prize in an NBC-sponsored screenplay-writing competition and launched his career.
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