Screenwriter Of `Dr. Strangelove' Terry Southern Dies At Age 71

NEW YORK - Author Terry Southern, who wrote the screenplays of "Dr. Strangelove" and "Easy Rider," movies that helped define America in the 1960s, died at 71.

Mr. Southern died last night at St. Luke's Hospital, where he had been admitted last Wednesday, hospital spokesman Michael Scahill said. An autopsy was planned, he said.

He had fallen ill at Columbia University, where he was lecturing on screenwriting, publicist Shari Misher said.

Southern's novels included the erotic and satiric "Candy" in 1958, in collaboration with Mason Hoffenberg, and "The Magic Christian" in 1959, for which he also wrote the screen treatment in 1971.

The script for Strangelove, on which Southern shared writing credit with director Stanley Kubrick, was nominated for an Academy Award and received the Writers Guild Award for best screenplay of 1964. The screenplay for "Easy Rider," a quintessential drug-road movie, was Oscar-nominated in 1969.

Other film credits included "The Cincinnati Kid," in which Steve McQueen played high-stakes poker, and "Barbarella," a vehicle of Jane Fonda's sex-kitten phase.