American playwright and screenwriter
Howard Koch
Born December 12, 1901New York City, US
Died August 17, 1995 (1995-08-18 ) (aged 93)
Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995)
[1]
[2]
[3] was an American playwright and
screenwriter who was
blacklisted by the
Hollywood
film studio bosses in the 1950s.
Background
Born to a
Jewish family
[4] in New York City, Koch grew up in
Kingston, New York , and was a graduate of St. Stephen's College (1922, later renamed
Bard College ) and
Columbia Law School (1925).
[5]
[6]
Career
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) which were produced by
Broadway .
[7]
Koch began playwriting in the late 1920s before he started working on radio scripts.
[8] In the 1930s, he worked as a writer for the CBS Mercury Theater of the Air. The work included the
Orson Welles
radio drama
The War of the Worlds (1938), which allegedly caused nationwide panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars.
[9]
[10] Koch later wrote a play about the panic, Invasion from Mars ,
[11] which was later adapted into the 1975 TV movie,
The Night That Panicked America , in which actor Joshua Bryant plays Koch.
[12]
In the 1940s, Koch began writing for Hollywood studios. His first accepted works were screenplays for
Michael Curtiz's
The Sea Hawk ,
William Wyler's
The Letter .
[10] 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 1943.
[13] He also wrote
Shining Victory (1941)
[14] and
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948),
[14] his favorite screenplay.
[15]
In 1943, at the request of
Jack L. Warner of
Warner Bros. , Koch wrote the screenplay for
Mission to Moscow (1943). The movie subsequently spawned controversy because of its positive portrayal of
Joseph Stalin and the
Soviet Union .
[16]
[17] After the war, Koch was dismissed after he was denounced as a
Communist .
[18] He was then criticized by the
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for his outspoken leftist political views. Koch was
blacklisted by Hollywood in 1951.
[19]
After being blacklisted, Koch moved with his wife, Anne (an accomplished writer in her own right) and their family to Europe and eventually took up residence in the United Kingdom
[15] with other blacklisted writers, where they wrote for five years for film and television (British television series
The Adventures of Robin Hood among them) under the pseudonyms "Peter Howard"
[8] and "Anne Rodney".
[20] In 1956, they returned to the United States and settled in
Woodstock, New York .
[21] Koch sought help from high-profile lawyer
Ed Williams in order to clear his name from Hollywood's blacklist. Koch was promptly removed from the blacklist,
[22] and he resumed his name and continued to write plays and books and remained actively committed to progressive political and social justice causes. His last Hollywood screenplay was for
The Fox in 1968.
[14]
Death
Koch died at age 93 in 1995 in
Kingston, New York .
[15]
Works
Plays
Invasion from Mars , (with Orson Welles) (pl) CBS, October 30, 1938.
Books
Invasion from Mars , ed. Orson Welles, Dell 1949.
The Panic Broadcast , Little, Brown and Company 1970, Avon Books 1971.
Casablanca: Script and Legend , Overlook Press 1973.
As Time Goes By: Memoirs of a Writer , Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1979.
Short stories
"Invasion from Inner Space", in Star Science Fiction Stories #6 , ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine 1959.
Anthologies
Invaders of Earth , ed.
Groff Conklin , Vanguard 1952, Pocket 1955, Tempo 1962.
The Treasury of Science Fiction Classics , ed. Harold W. Kuebler, Hanover House 1954.
The Armchair Science Reader , ed. Isabel S. Gordon & Sophie Sorkin, Simon & Schuster 1959.
Enemies in Space , ed. Groff Conklin, Digit 1962.
Contact , ed. Noel Keyes, Paperback Library 1963.
Speculations , ed. Thomas E. Sanders, Glencoe Press 1973.
Bug-Eyed Monsters , ed. Anthony Cheetham, Panther 1974.
References
^ Ancestry.com. New York City Births, 1891-1902 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2000.
^
Social Security Death Index .
^ U.S. Census, January 1, 1920. State of New York, County of Ulster, enumeration district 174, p. 8A, family 218.
^
Tablet Magazine: "The Brothers Who Co-Wrote ‘Casablanca’ - Writers Julius and Philip Epstein are also forebears of baseball’s Theo Epstein" by Adam Chandler August 22, 2013
^ Danca, Vincent J. (1974).
An Analysis of Casablanca with an Emphasis on Five Scenes . University of Wisconsin--Madison.
^ Communications, Museum of Broadcast (2004).
The Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Radio . Fitzroy Dearborn.
ISBN
978-1-57958-452-8 .
^
Internet Broadway Database .
^
a
b
"Howard Koch; Oscar-Winning Co-Writer of 'Casablanca' " . Los Angeles Times . 1995-08-18. Retrieved 2022-08-21 .
^ Sterling, Christopher H. (2013-05-13).
Biographical Encyclopedia of American Radio . Routledge.
ISBN
978-1-136-99375-6 .
^
a
b Starr, Kevin (2003-09-11).
Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950 . OUP USA.
ISBN
978-0-19-516897-6 .
^ Riley, Kathleen (2005-04-27).
Nigel Hawthorne on Stage . Univ of Hertfordshire Press.
ISBN
978-1-902806-31-0 .
^ Roberts, Jerry (2009-06-05).
Encyclopedia of Television Film Directors . Scarecrow Press.
ISBN
978-0-8108-6378-1 .
^ Isenberg, Noah (2017-02-14).
We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood's Most Beloved Film . W. W. Norton & Company.
ISBN
978-0-393-24313-0 .
^
a
b
c
"AFI|Catalog" . catalog.afi.com . Retrieved 2022-08-21 .
^
a
b
c Gussow, Mel (18 August 1995).
"Howard Koch, a Screenwriter For Casablanca , Dies at 93" .
The New York Times . p. D17.
^ Frankel, Glenn (2017-02-21).
High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
ISBN
978-1-62040-950-3 .
^ Robinson, Harlow (2007).
Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image . UPNE.
ISBN
978-1-55553-686-2 .
^ Dick, Bernard F. (2014-10-17).
Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars . University Press of Kentucky.
ISBN
978-0-8131-5951-5 .
^ Birdwell, Michael E. (2000).
Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.'s Campaign Against Nazism . NYU Press.
ISBN
978-0-8147-9871-3 .
^
"Howard Koch" . Bard College Archives. Archived from
the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-04-08 .
^ Ancestry.com. U.S.: Selected Jewish Obituaries, 1948-2002 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2008.
^ Thomas, Evan (2012-12-04).
The Man to See . Simon and Schuster.
ISBN
978-1-4391-2796-4 .
External links
1928–1950
Benjamin Glazer (1928)
Hanns Kräly (1929)
Frances Marion (1930)
Howard Estabrook (1931)
Edwin J. Burke (1932)
Victor Heerman and
Sarah Y. Mason (1933)
Robert Riskin (1934)
Dudley Nichols (1935)
Pierre Collings and
Sheridan Gibney (1936)
Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, and
Norman Reilly Raine (1937)
Ian Dalrymple ,
Cecil Arthur Lewis ,
W. P. Lipscomb , and
George Bernard Shaw (1938)
Sidney Howard (1939)
Donald Ogden Stewart (1940)
Sidney Buchman and
Seton I. Miller (1941)
George Froeschel ,
James Hilton ,
Claudine West , and
Arthur Wimperis (1942)
Philip G. Epstein ,
Julius J. Epstein , and
Howard Koch (1943)
Frank Butler and
Frank Cavett (1944)
Charles Brackett and
Billy Wilder (1945)
Robert Sherwood (1946)
George Seaton (1947)
John Huston (1948)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1950)
1951–1975 1976–2000 2001–present
International National Academics Artists People Other