They teamed with Buck Henry to write Peter Bogdanovich’s madcap 1972 comedy, “What’s Up, Doc?,” with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. They were also among the many writers who contributed to the erotic revue “Oh! Calcutta!,” which ran on Broadway from 1969 to 1972 and was revived in 1976.
In 1978, Mr. Benton and Mr. Newman returned to the subject of their 1966 musical, joining with Mr. Newman’s wife, Leslie, and Mario Puzo to write the hugely successful first Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie. The Newmans worked on the scripts for the next two installments in the “Superman” franchise as well, but Mr. Benton did not.
Mr. Benton and Mr. Newman gradually stopped collaborating, although they remained friends. Their last joint project was Mr. Benton’s thriller “Still of the Night” in 1982. Mr. Newman died in 2003.
Mr. Benton’s wife of 60 years, Sallie Benton, an artist, died in 2023. He is survived by a son, John Benton.
Not all of Mr. Benton’s films were successful. Among those that were not was “Billy Bathgate” (1991), based on an E.L. Doctorow novel and starring Dustin Hoffman as the gangster Dutch Schultz. The movie, with a script by the playwright Tom Stoppard, displeased Mr. Doctorow. It also received mixed reviews and lost money. In a 1998 interview with Venice magazine, Mr. Benton called it “a deeply unsuccessful picture” and suggested why.
“I’m a director of small things,” he said. “It needed someone who was used to a bigger canvas.”
In any case, Mr. Benton was philosophical about the ebbs and flows of success. He knew, he told The Times in 1984, that if a movie works, it is “just a matter of time before something else doesn’t.”
