Dictionary Thesaurus Word Dynamo Quotes Reference Translator Spanish

George Axelrod

George Axelrod (June 9, 1922 - June 21, 2003) was an American screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director.

Biography

Personal life

Axelrod was born in New York City, New York, the son of Beatrice Carpenter, a silent film actress, and Herman Axelrod, who worked in real estate. His mother was of Scottish and English descent and his father Russian Jewish. He is the father of lawyer Peter Axelrod, painting contractor and writer Steven Axelrod, actress Nina Axelrod and stepfather of screenwriter Jonathan Axelrod (who married the actress Illeana Douglas).

Career

A consistently effective scenarist, Axelrod wrote often witty and always acute examinations of American social mores that produced several superior films of the 1950s and 60s. After serving in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, The New York-born Axelrod found work writing scripts for radio programs, including "The Shadow," "Midnight" and "Grand Ole Opry," eventually branching into television. He said he contributed to or collaborated on more than 400 TV and radio scripts, and wrote for a number of top comedians, including Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin before earning breakout success with his 1952 stage comedy. The Seven Year Itch, a risque social satire about a middle-class man who has an affair while his wife and children are on vacation.

Axelrod's overnight fame prompted him to write a seriocomic teleplay, "Confessions of a Nervous Man," starring Art Carney as a playwright waiting anxiously in a theatre district bar for the newspaper reviews of his first play to hit the streets. Based on his own experiences on the opening night of The Seven Year Itch, the one-hour play was presented as the November 30, 1953 episode of Studio One. Although The Seven Year Itch was a hit on Broadway, it was deemed not ready for a mainstream audience when it was made into a 1955 film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe. The plot was watered-down with the husband (Tom Ewell) only fantasizing about having an affair.

Axelrod's next stage hit was Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, a Faustian comedy about a fan magazine writer (Orson Bean) selling his soul to the Devil (in the guise of a literary agent) to become a successful screenwriter, which ran for more than a year on Broadway in 1955-56 and received much attention in the national press due to its star, Jayne Mansfield. It, too, was turned into a film, but 20th Century Fox had director/screenwriter Frank Tashlin change the story to a satire on television advertising and throw out all of Axelrod's characters except Rita Marlowe (Mansfield recreating her stage role). Axelrod was contemptuous of the 1957 movie, saying he didn't go see it because the studio "never used my story, my play or my script."

In the early 1960s, Lauren Bacall starred in his comic play "Goodbye Charlie" which was not a success although a movie version was made with Debbie Reynolds.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Axelrod was one of the best paid writers in Hollywood, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's". He was also highly regarded for his adaptation of Richard Condon's novel for director John Frankenheimer's Cold War thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) starring Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra. Axelrod, who co-produced, considered it the best adaptation he ever penned. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the movie was taken out of circulation and wasn't re-released until 1988, when it became a box office hit and was deemed by critics to be a classic of American cinema.

Axelrod wrote the original screen play for "How to Murder Your Wife" (1965) which was directed by Richard Quine and starred Jack Lemmon, Verna Lisi and Terry-Thomas

Axelrod's directorial efforts ("Lord Love a Duck" 1966, "The Secret Life of an American Wife" 1968), though equally superb, have unfortunately been overlooked. After a decade hiatus, he returned to film work in 1979 providing the screenplay for the remake of "The Lady Vanishes". Subsequent contributions include the scripts for Frankenheimer's "The Holcroft Covenant" (1985) and "The Fourth Protocol" (1987).

Axelrod was also an author of three novels. Blackmailer, a comic mystery, Beggar's Choice, a comedy of role reversal; and Where Am I Now When I Need Me?, a comic look at the Hollywood scene.