Noel Behn

Noel Behn (1928–1998) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and theatrical producer. Born in Chicago and educated in California and Paris, he served in the US Army’s Counterintelligence Corps before settling in New York City. As the producing director of the Cherry Lane Theatre, he played a lead role in the off-Broadway movement of the 1950s and presented the world premiere of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Behn’s debut novel, The Kremlin Letter (1966), was a New York Times bestseller and the inspiration for a John Huston film starring Orson Welles and Max von Sydow. Big Stick-Up at Brink’s! (1977), the true story of the 1950 Brink’s robbery in Boston, was based on nearly one thousand hours of conversations with the criminals and became an Academy Award–nominated film directed by William Friedkin. Behn also wrote for television and served as a creative consultant on the acclaimed series Homicide: Life on the Street. His other books include the thrillers The Shadowboxer (1969) and Seven Silent Men (1984), and Lindbergh: The Crime (1995), a nonfiction account of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.