Noel Ira Behn (Chicago, January 6, 1928 – New York, July 27, 1998) was an American novelist, screenwriter and theatrical producer.
His first novel,The Kremlin Letter, drawn from his work in theUS Army's Counterintelligence Corps, was published in 1966 and made into afilm byJohn Huston in 1970. Behn's non-fictionBig Stick-Up at Brink's about a 1950 raid on a Boston armoured car facility, was published in 1977 and adapted into a 1978 movie,The Brink's Job, starringPeter Falk andPeter Boyle. His controversial bookLindbergh: The Crime (1993) delved into theLindbergh kidnapping, claiming that the baby had died in a family accident, and the kidnapping was faked.
Behn was influential in the development ofOff Broadway theatre in New York and he was producing director of theCherry Lane Theater throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Among the influential works premiered there under his direction wereSean O’Casey’sPurple Dust andSamuel Beckett’sEndgame.[1] Beginning in the late 1960s, owing to the happenstance of having offices in the same building on 57th Street in New York City, Behn began longstanding creative friendships with screenwriterPaddy Chayefsky, choreographerBob Fosse and playwrightHerb Gardner.[2]He also wrote seven episodes ofHomicide: Life on the Street between 1993 and 1997.[3] The second episode of the third season of the prison dramaOz was dedicated to his memory.
Behn became a well-known participant in the social life of Manhattan, often found at theRussian Tea Room (where he always took the first booth for lunch), and atElaine's on the Upper East Side in the evening, where he talked and drank with writers such asGay Talese,A. E. Hotchner,Peter Maas andPete Hamill.Woody Allen was also a regular at Elaine's, and found acting roles for Behn in his filmsStardust Memories (1980) andAnother Woman (1988).[2]
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