You are now entering the Jewish Currents archive.
November 12: Rosemary’s Daddy
Lawrence Bush
November 12, 2016
Ira Levin, author of plays and novels that became major film, television and theatrical productions, including Rosemary’s Baby, A Kiss Before Dying, No Time for Sergeants (the play, adapted from a novel), The Stepford Wives, and The Boys from Brazil, died at 78 on this date in 2007. His best-known play is Deathtrap, the longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway. A native New Yorker, Levin was a graduate of Horace Mann and New York University. Margalit Fox described his work in the New York Times as “blending mystery, Gothic horror, science fiction and the techno-thriller — Mr. Levin’s novels conjured up a world full of quietly looming menace, in which anything could happen to anyone at any time. In short, the Ira Levin universe was a great deal like the real one, only more so: more starkly terrifying, more exquisitely mundane.”
“I feel guilty that Rosemary’s Baby led to The Exorcist, The Omen. A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan. I don’t believe in Satan. And I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn’t been so many of these books. Of course, I didn’t send back any of the royalty checks.” --Ira Levin
Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.
Also by Lawrence Bush
History
How Jewish Currents Covered the Soviet Jewry Movement
Even once the magazine accepted the evidence of Soviet antisemitism, it continued to distrust the politics of the mainstream campaign.
Lawrence Bush
Blog-Shmog
JEWDAYO Rocks: Jewish Rock and Roll Dates for August
Lawrence Bush
