[citation needed] 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.
The screen rights were bought by 20th Century Fox, but the studio had director/screenwriter Frank Tashlin change the story to a satire on television advertising and throw out all of Axelrod's characters except Rita Marlowe (with Mansfield recreating her stage role).
In 1959–60, Lauren Bacall starred in his comic play Goodbye Charlie which ran for 109 performances, followed by a film version with Debbie Reynolds.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Axelrod was one of the best paid screenwriters in Hollywood, and he was nominated for an Academy Award for his 1961 adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.
He was highly regarded for his adaptation of Richard Condon's novel for director John Frankenheimer's Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962) starring Laurence Harvey and Frank Sinatra.
After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the movie was taken out of circulation and wasn't re-released until 1988, when it became a box office hit and was deemed by critics to be a classic of American cinema.
Axelrod wrote the original screenplay for How to Murder Your Wife (1965), directed by Richard Quine with Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi and Terry-Thomas.