Novelist, playwright Ira Levin dead at 78

NEW YORK (AFP) - Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote "Rosemary's Baby," "The Stepford Wives" and "The Boys From Brazil," has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Levin died Monday at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes, the newspaper quoted his son Nicholas as saying.

Able to write a variety of genres, from mystery and horror to Broadway comedy, Levin sold tens of millions of books despite producing only seven novels in four decades, the Times quoted his agent Phyllis Westberg as saying.

Levin was born in New York in 1929 and served in the US Army briefly in the early 1950s after leaving university. He went on to write for television before publishing his first novel, "A Kiss Before Dying," in 1953.

He also wrote for theater, notably adapting a novel by Mac Hyman into the 1955 Broadway comedy hit "No Time for Sergeants," and penning comic thriller "Deathtrap," in 1979, which ran on Broadway before also being made into a film.