George Axelrod (June 9, 1922 – June 21, 2003) was an American screenwriter, producer, playwright and film director, best known for his play The Seven Year Itch (1952), which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Marilyn Monroe. Axelrod was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and also adapted Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Early life and family Axelrod was born in New York City, the son of Beatrice Carpenter, a silent film actress, and Herman Axelrod, a Columbia graduate who had worked on the school's annual Varsity Show with Oscar Hammerstein and who later went into real estate. His father was Russian Jewish and his mother was of Scottish and English descent. He was the father of lawyer Peter Axelrod; Steven Axelrod, painting contractor and writer; Nina Axelrod, actress and stepfather of screenwriter Jonathan Axelrod (who married the actress Illeana Douglas). He was a grandfather of actor Taliesin Jaffe. Career Radio and Broadway Early in his career, Axelrod worked in summer stock theater as a stage manager and an occasional actor. During World War II, he was a member of the Army Signal Corps. When he returned to civilian life, he wrote for The Shadow, Midnight, Grand Ole Opry, and other radio programs. With the advent of television, he wrote for that medium, too, eventually working on more than 400 TV and radio scripts. Comedians for whom he wrote included Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin Axelrod wrote the 1952 stage comedy, The Seven Year Itch, a risqué social satire about a middle-class man who has an affair while his wife and children are on vacation. The Seven Year Itch was first presented by Courtney Burr and Elliot Nugent at the Fulton Theatre, New York City, on July 15, 1952. Television Axelrod's overnight success prompted him to write a seriocomic teleplay, Confessions of a Nervous Man, starring Art Carney as a playwright waiting anxiously in a Theater 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. He appeared on television himself occasionally as a guest panelist on What's My Line? Films The Broadway success of The Seven Year Itch led to the successful 1955