Award-winning writer of ‘Rosemary's Baby’, ‘The Stepford Wives’ and ‘Deathtrap’

Ira Levin, who died on 12 November, 2007, aged 78, had been putting horror and suspense into the everyday since the 1950s.

His most famous novels, Rosemary's Baby (1967) and The Stepford Wives (1972), gave sinister and paranormal consequences to those most quintessential parts of the average life, childbirth and marriage.

And like his natural successor to the horror crown, Stephen King, most of his work for print and stage has been given the cinematic treatment.

Ira Marvin Levin was born on 27 August, 1929 in Manhattan. His family was Jewish but not particularly religious. His father, Charles, intended his only son to take over his toy business, but young Ira was developing other interests: first stage magic, then art and, by the age of 15, writing.

He attended university in Iowa and New York and earned a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy. As a child he had been particularly fond of mystery stories and he began writing detective scripts during his studies. He was runner-up in a CBS contest with a murder story called The Old Woman and then sold the script to NBC for $400. They broadcast it in 1951 as part of their suspense series Lights Out.

Despite an uneasy relationship, Ira’s father agreed to subsidise his writing career for two years with the proviso that he would enter the toy trade if the venture failed. Spurred on, he wrote two more teleplays for Lights Out, a television adaptation of Mac Hyman's novel No Time For Sergeants and several short stories.

By 1953 he had completed his first novel, the surprisingly-polished noir murder-mystery A Kiss Before Dying. The Mystery Writers of America were impressed enough to give him an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first novel. The book would later be adapted for the cinema twice, in 1956 and 1991.

Between 1953 and ’55 Mr Levin served in the Army Signal Corps. He was occupied for most of the next decade with the theatre, having huge success on Broadway with No Time For Sergeants (1956), Critic's Choice (1960) and his only musical, Drat! The Cat! (1965), for which he also wrote the music – one song later became a hit for Barbra Streisand.

After sever light-hearted projects, Mr Levin was to return to literature in stark contrast. Rosemary's Baby tells of a young bride in Manhattan who fears that she has been impregnated by the devil himself. Within a year of the novel’s publication, Roman Polanski had adapted it for the cinema and turned it into an Oscar-nominated horror classic.

His next book moved from the occult to a dystopic vision with his Brave New World-esque sci-fi adventure This Perfect Day (1970) in which the world is controlled by an invasive computer program. Less extreme but equally unsettling were the male residents of Stepford who replace their wives with docile and obedient robotic clones. The Stepford Wives was filmed in 1975 and 2004.

The Boys from Brazil (1976) brought science fiction even further into the modern age with a storyline centred around Nazi experiments into cloning. Taking another break from novels, Mr Levin then wrote Deathtrap (1978), a Tony-winning comedy about a playwright’s elaborate plot to murder a student for his script. Both were quickly adapted as films and well-received by audiences.

Mr Levin’s output was sporadic for the remainder of his career, resulting in two more plays, a voyeuristic thriller, Sliver (1991), and a follow-up to Rosemary's Baby (Son of Rosemary, 1997). Critics said his later work always had one eye on the inevitable movie deal, but Levin had always been a playwright at heart and he shrugged off such churlishness.

His accolades in the fields of horror and science fiction include a second Poe Award (for Deathtrap), a place in Prometheus Awards’ Hall of Fame and the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker award for lifetime achievement.

He was married and divorced twice and had three sons from the first marriage. He suffered a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment.