Critic's choice

27 Aug 1929 – 1 Nov 2007

Ira Levin was born in 1929 in New York City and is a graduate of New York University. He wrote television plays and short stories and, when he was twenty-two, A Kiss Before Dying. After two years of military service he turned to playwriting; No Time for Sergeants, adapted from Mac Hyman's novel was his most successful stage work, but his favorite is a musical called Drat! The Cat! for which he wrote the book and lyrics. Its early closing sent him back to novel writing, and the outcome was the diabolical chiller Rosemary's Baby. He has since written another play, Dr. Cook's Garden, filmed by Paramount Pictures in 1971, and he is nearing completon of another novel. He lives in Manhattan, is …