Best known for his haunting works "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Boys from Brazil," author Ira Levin died Monday of a heart attack at the age of 78.
Levin was a playwright and television scribe whose first novel "A Kiss Before Dying" was published in '54. And like many of his books, it was adapted for the screen. "Rosemary's Baby" - the story of a New York wife selected to give birth to the child of Satan - arrived on shelves 14 years later. Roman Polanski masterfully adapted the tale in 1968.
"The Boys from Brazil" and other property's followed including "The Stepford Wives" and "Sliver."
"Deathtrap", a comedy-thriller by Levin, ran four years on Broadway, and was crisply done for the cinema by Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine.
In Levin's play "Dr. Cook's Garden", the friendly doctor in an idyllic Vermont community has been pruning more than just his garden. Bing Crosby played Dr. Cook in a pretty good TV movie, way back in 1971.
Levin's next novel was "This Perfect Day", a subversive science-fiction story set in a future where disease, deformity, discrimination and all other societal ills have been cured, and everyone's immunized every week. Remarkably, This Perfect Day has never been filmed, and these days it's probably too radical for Hollywood to try.
Levin is survived by three sons and three grandsons.