Ira Levin – Biography of Ira Levin

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American author Ira Marvin Levin He was born on August 27, 1929, in New York. He was expected to follow his father into the toy business, however the teenager Levin he had other ideas, he wanted to be a writer. In his last year of college, he entered a television script contest. He was only runner-up, but was later able to sell this work to the NBC television network, which became the series Lights out, issued in 1951.

While writing for shows like Lights out Y The United States Steel Hour, Levin he worked on his first novel. He published his mystery novel, “A kiss before dying“in 1953, which quickly brought him commercial success and critical acclaim. The novel won the Edgar Award for best first novel the following year.

Levin he served in the United States Army from 1953 to 1955. After being discharged, he spent much of his time dedicating himself to the theater. It enjoyed some success with its Broadway adaptation of Mac Hyman’s humorous novel, No Time for Sergeants, about a military recruit.

But some of his own original works failed. The mistery Interlock 1958 had no major significance. To the 1960 comedy Critic’s Choice He did a little better, staying on the bill for about six months. Directed and produced by Otto Preminger, the play featured a starring Henry Fonda and Georgann Johnson.
Perhaps one of the biggest disappointments of Levin it may have been the 1965 musical Drat! That Cat!, a comedy that only had a few performances before it closed. This failure did not deter Levin. He came back with another mystery play, Dr. Cook’s Garden, two years later.

In 1967, Levin published what is possibly his best known novel, Rosemary’s baby. The horrible plot tells the story of Rosemary woodhouse, a young wife in New York City who may be pregnant with the devil’s child. With strange occurrences happening in your apartment building, Woodhouse she doesn’t know who to trust, including her own husband. He finally discovers a satanic clan in his building, a group with sinister designs on his baby. The following year, this thriller was made into a feature film directed by Roman Polanski and starring Mia Farrow as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as her husband.

The success of Rosemary’s Baby is believed to have influenced the creation of other satanic horror films such as The Exorcist (1973), however, subsequently Levin expressed dismay at the trend and looked to other genres.

He continued to thrive as a novelist with such bestselling works as The Stepford Wives (1972) and The Boys From Brazil (1976). On The Stepford Wives, explored a haunting suburban city where handcuffs are replaced by androids. Again working with fantasy Levin imagined that Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi who experimented with concentration camp victims, was attempting to bring the Third Reich back to power in Children of Brazil. The book explores the question of future cloning.

Both novels ignited the Hollywood imagination. Katharine Ross played a newcomer to the town of Stepford in The Stepford Wives (1975), a role later played by Nicole Kidman in the 2004 remake. A Nazi hunter played by Laurence Olivier tries to thwart the plans of the Dr. Mengele (Gregory Peck) in the film version of The Boys From Brazil (1978).
That same year, Levin experienced its greatest theatrical triumph. The comic mystery Deathtrap premiered on Broadway, it became a huge success that lasted for years. The author successfully fused humor and witty plot twists in this story about a failed writer who plans to kill his student for his novel. Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve starred in the 1982 film.
Levin he wrote only two more novels during his lifetime. Sliver (1991) told the story of a woman watched over by the owner of her high-tech apartment building, and later made into a film in 1993 starring Sharon Stone and William Baldwin. In 1997, Levin tried to capitalize on his previous success with Son of Rosemary: The Sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, but it did not capture the interest of readers.

Ira Levin He died at the age of 78 of a heart attack on November 12, 2007, in his apartment in New York City. His books continue to be popular and have new impressions.