Ira LevinFilmography

Born:: August 27, 1929 in New York, NY
Occupation:: Screen Story, Screenwriter, Book Author, Play Author
Biography:: Regarded by critics as one of the most blithely entertaining postwar American novelists, Ira Levin enjoyed decades of not merely seeing his novels hit the market as best-sellers, but of watching Hollywood turn those tomes into satisfying cinematic outings, time and again. Many observers (such as Stephen King...Read More

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The Boys From Brazil

Crew: Book Author

Synopsis: Director Brett Ratner teams with screenwriters Richard Potter and Matthew Stravitz for a second screen adaptation of Ira Levin's paranoid novel concerning a South American Nazi plot to revive the Third Reich. Originally filmed in 1978 with actors Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck in the leads, Levin Read More

1/1/11
The Stepford Wives

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart, David Marshall Grant, Jon Lovitz, Faith Hill, Lorri Bagley

Synopsis: Ira Levin's best-selling novel about a town where great wives aren't born but made gets a second screen adaptation in this darkly satirical comedy drama. Joanna Eberhart (Nicole Kidman) is a successful television executive until one day her career hits the glass ceiling and crashes to the ground. Read More

6/11/04
Footsteps

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Candice Bergen, Bryan Brown, Michael Murphy, Bug Hall

Synopsis: Adapted from an unproduced play by Ira Levin (Rosemary's Baby, et al.), the made-for-TV Footsteps stars Candice Bergen as Daisy Lowenthal, a best-selling suspense novelist who has recently "killed off" her most popular fictional character -- and who is recovering from a nervous breakdown. Read More

2003
Sliver

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Sharon Stone, William Baldwin, Tom Berenger, Polly Walker, Colleen Camp

Synopsis: Phillip Noyce directed Joe Eszterhas's adaptation of Ira Levin's novel about voyeurism, starring Sharon Stone as Carly Norris, a book editor on the rebound from an emotionless seven-year marriage. Carly decides that a change of location will help her in the healing process, so she moves into a Read More

1993
A Kiss Before Dying

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Matt Dillon, Sean Young, Max von Sydow, James Russo, Diane Ladd

Synopsis: This thriller is the second film based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin. Matt Dillon stars as Jonathan Corliss, a lethal schemer from the wrong side of the tracks. Now a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan has been obsessed since childhood with the fortunes of a company Read More

4/26/91
Deathtrap

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon, Irene Worth, Henry Jones

Synopsis: Sidney Lumet provides another of his film adaptations of Broadway successes -- in this case Ira Levin's 1978 clever Broadway murder mystery that starred John Wood in a triumphant turn as down-on-his-luck playwright Sidney Bruhl. Wood's brittle airiness is replaced in the film version by Michael Caine Read More

1982
Revenge of the Stepford Wives

Crew: Book Author

Synopsis: According to the NBC publicity packet, the made-for-TV Revenge of the Stepford Wives was "based on characters created by Ira Levin" -- specifically, those characters created by Levin for his fantasy-suspense novel The Stepford Wives, which was transformed into a theatrical film in 1975. On this Read More

1980
The Boys From Brazil

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen

Synopsis: This film of Ira Levin's novel The Boys from Brazil wastes no time in establishing the fact that several seemingly unrelated men have been mysteriously murdered. Elderly Jewish Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), brought into the case when the clues seem to point to a neo-fascist plot Read More

1978
The Stepford Wives

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Nanette Newman, Patrick O'Neal

Synopsis: In the William Goldman-scripted, Bryan Forbes-directed adaptation of Ira Levin's savagely satiric sci-fi novel The Stepford Wives, housewife Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and their children to the "ideal" suburban community of Stepford, CT. Slowly, Joanna Read More

1975
Dr. Cook's Garden

Crew: Play Author

Synopsis: An uncharacteristic Bing Crosby plays Dr. Cook, a small town physician with a little something to hide. Outwardly gentle and compassionate, Cook is less politely inclined to those in his Vermont community whom he regards as disposable. When a young man (Frank Converse) whom Cook has raised as a Read More

1970
Rosemary's Baby

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans

Synopsis: In Roman Polanski's first American film, adapted from Ira Levin's horror bestseller, a young wife comes to believe that her offspring is not of this world. Waifish Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband, Guy (John Cassavetes), move into the Bramford, an old New York City Read More

1968
Critic's Choice

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Maxwell, Rip Torn, Jesse Royce Landis

Synopsis: Ira Levin wrote the stage comedy Critic's Choice as a good-natured retort to a comment made by critic Walter Kerr. In his essay How Not to Write a Play, Kerr noted that the worst possible scenario would involve a drama critic forced to review a play written by his wife (we should mention that Read More

1962
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Sylvia

Crew: Screen Story

Synopsis: Suicidal Sylvia (Ann Todd) desperately wants to be reunited with Peter, the callous fortune-hunter whom she'd married after a whirlwind courtship, and whom she was forced to divorce by her wealthy father John Leeds (John McIntire). Aware of Sylvia's ardor, Peter approaches John and offers to leave Read More

1958
No Time for Sergeants

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Andy Griffith, Nick Adams, Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton, Howard I. Smith

Synopsis: Mac Hyman's hilarious barracks novel No Time for Sergeants was adapted for TV by Ira Levin in 1955, with newcomer Andy Griffith as bumptious Air Force draftee Will Stockdale. This TV version was soon afterward transformed into a Broadway play, and then a movie, again with Griffith in the lead. Read More

1958
A Kiss Before Dying

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Robert Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter, Joanne Woodward, Virginia Leith, Robert Quarry, Mary Astor, Howard Petrie, George Macready

Synopsis: Budd Corliss (Robert Wagner) is an ambitious, poor boy from the wrong-side-of-the-tracks who murders his girlfriend Dorothy (Joanne Woodward) -- making the death look like a suicide -- when her pregnancy eliminates his chances of being accepted by her wealthy family. Her sister Ellen (Virginia Leith Read More

1956
No Time for Sergeants

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Andy Griffith, Eddie Le Roy, Joe Brown, Jr.

Synopsis: This slapstick comedy was originally performed on live television and chronicles the exploits of Georgia hayseed Will Stockdale, after he is inducted into the army. Mayhem ensues as he tries to adjust to the sophisticated ways of military life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1955