Actor and screenwriter who was one of the architects of
American comedyThe actor and screenwriter Buck Henry, who has died aged 89 of a heart attack, was rarely seen without a
baseball cap and a deadpan expression; he looked like Jack Lemmon gone sour.
One of the architects of modern American comedy, Henry created with Mel Brooks the TV spy spoof Get Smart, which ran on US television from 1965 to 1970, received an Oscar nomination for The Graduate (1967), co-wrote the screwball masterpiece What’s Up, Doc? (1972), which was his favourite among his own work, and performed regularly during the 1970s on the US sketch series Saturday Night Live. He later wrote Gus Van Sant’s black
comedy To Die For (1995), starring Nicole Kidman as a rapacious TV weather forecaster who plots her husband’s murder.