John Michael Hayes, an American screenwriter associated with Hollywood blockbusters and who did four films with Alfred Hitchcock, has died. He was 89.

Hayes died of natural causes Wednesday at his retirement home in Hanover, N.H., according to John Wilson of Rand Wilson Funeral Home.

Hayes worked with Hitchcock on To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry and the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his script for Rear Window, the taut Hitchcock thriller starring Jimmy Stewart as a man confined to a wheelchair who witnesses a murder in a neighbouring apartment. It is considered one of Hitchcock's finest films and earned Hayes an Edgar Award.

Hayes also wrote the screenplay for the 1958 Mark Robson-directed film Peyton Place, which won three Oscars and earned another three nominations, including one for scriptwriting.

Hayes was born in Worcester, Mass., in 1919. He got his start writing for newspapers and radio and the Associated Press wire service.

This earned him enough to pay his way through school at Massachusetts State College. After a stint in the U.S. Army, he moved to Hollywood and wrote for radio programs such as Lucille Ball's My Favorite Husband and the serial drama The Adventures of Sam Spade.

He moved into film in 1952, writing melodramas such as Torch Song, Butterfield Eight and The Carpetbaggers.

In the 1960s, Hayes tried his hand at TV writing, penning scripts for Winter Kill, Nevada Smith and Adams of Eagle Lake.

He was a writing instructor at Dartmouth College's film studies program for several years and wrote his last screenplay, Iron Will, in 1994.

Hayes donated his collection of scripts, photographs, letters and clippings from his Hollywood career to Dartmouth College in 1990.

With files from the Associated Press