Howard E. Koch
| Howard E. Koch | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 12, 1901 New York City, New York |
| Died |
August 17, 1995 (aged 93) , New York |
Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.
Born in New York City, New York, Koch grew up in Kingston, New York and was a graduate of St. Stephen's College (later renamed Bard College) and Columbia Law School.
While practicing law in Hartsdale, New York, he began to write plays. Great Scott (1929), Give Us This Day (1933), and In Time to Come (1941) were produced on Broadway.
His radio work in the 1930s as a writer for the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air included the Orson Welles radio drama The War of the Worlds (1938), which caused nationwide panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars. Koch later wrote a play about the panic, Invasion From Mars, which was later adapted into the 1975 TV movie, The Night That Panicked America, in which actor Joshua Bryant plays Koch.
Koch began writing for Hollywood studios. His first accepted screenplay was made into a 1940 film. Koch contributed to the popular film Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, which he co-scripted with writers Julius and Philip Epstein in 1942, and for which he received an Academy Award in 1944. He also wrote Shining Victory (1941), and Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), his favorite screenplay.
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