GeorgeAxelrod, who has died in Los Angeles aged 81, scored a hit with his play The Seven Year Itch and wrote the screenplays for Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate; at one point, he was the highest-paid scriptwriter in Hollywood.
Axelrod was widely credited with having anticipated the sexual revolution in The Seven-Year Itch, which deals with a happily married man's brief fling with a young neighbour (a role taken in the screen adaptation by Marilyn Monroe).
GeorgeAxelrod was born in 1922 - "a great year for writers and drunks," he claimed - and grew up in New York.
Axelrod's specialty was the packaging of sex farce together with social satire; he thrived both on stage and on films, though for many years the film versions of his works had to be watered down to accommodate the censors.
Axelrod also had success adapting the works of other writers for the movies, as witness Bus Stop (1956), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
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