Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwrightA playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors...
and
screenwriterScreenwriters or scenarists or scriptwriters are people in a film crew who write/create the screenplays from which films and television programs are made....
who was
blacklistedThe Hollywood blacklist—more precisely the entertainment industry blacklist, into which it expanded—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political...
by the Hollywood
movie studioA movie studio is, in the established sense of the term, a company that distributes films. Literally, however, the term denotes a controlled environment for the making of a motion picture. This environment may be interior , exterior , or both...
bosses in the 1950s.
Born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, he was a graduate of
Bard CollegeBard College, founded in 1860, is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:Bard has a 600-acre campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, near the town of Red Hook, overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, within the Hudson River Historic District,...
and
Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. David Schizer is the dean....
. While practicing law in
Hartsdale, New YorkHartsdale is a hamlet and a census-designated place located in the town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York. The population was 9,830 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hartsdale is located at ....
, he began to write plays.
Great Scott (1929),
Give Us This Day (1933), and
In Time to Come (1941) were produced on
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
.
His radio work includes the
Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles was an American film director, writer, actor and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television, and radio. Welles was also an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years...
radio dramaRadio Drama is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story....
The War of the WorldsThe War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode...
(1938), which caused panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars.
Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
playwrightA playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works are usually written to be performed in front of a live audience by actors...
and
screenwriterScreenwriters or scenarists or scriptwriters are people in a film crew who write/create the screenplays from which films and television programs are made....
who was
blacklistedThe Hollywood blacklist—more precisely the entertainment industry blacklist, into which it expanded—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political...
by the Hollywood
movie studioA movie studio is, in the established sense of the term, a company that distributes films. Literally, however, the term denotes a controlled environment for the making of a motion picture. This environment may be interior , exterior , or both...
bosses in the 1950s.
Born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, he was a graduate of
Bard CollegeBard College, founded in 1860, is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:Bard has a 600-acre campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, near the town of Red Hook, overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, within the Hudson River Historic District,...
and
Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. David Schizer is the dean....
. While practicing law in
Hartsdale, New YorkHartsdale is a hamlet and a census-designated place located in the town of Greenburgh, Westchester County, New York. The population was 9,830 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hartsdale is located at ....
, he began to write plays.
Great Scott (1929),
Give Us This Day (1933), and
In Time to Come (1941) were produced on
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
.
His radio work includes the
Orson WellesGeorge Orson Welles was an American film director, writer, actor and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television, and radio. Welles was also an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years...
radio dramaRadio Drama is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story....
The War of the WorldsThe War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode...
(1938), which caused panic among some listeners for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of spaceships from Mars. The incident was dramatized into a 1975 TV movie,
The Night That Panicked America.
Koch began writing for Hollywood studios. His first accepted screenplay was made into a 1940 film. Koch contributed dialogue to the popular film
CasablancaCasablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one...
with
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor.After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film...
, which he coscripted with writers Julius and Philip Epstein in 1942, and for which he received an Academy Award in 1944. He also wrote
Shining VictoryShining Victory is a 1941 film based on the play, Jupiter Laughs, by A. J. Cronin. It stars James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, and Barbara O'Neil, and it was the first film directed by Irving Rapper. Bette Davis makes a brief cameo appearance as a nurse in the film.-Plot...
(1941), and
Letter from an Unknown WomanLetter from an Unknown Woman is a 1948 film directed by Max Ophüls. It was based on the novella of the same name. The novella was written by a famous Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig...
(1948), his favorite screenplay.
In 1943, at the request of
Jack WarnerJack Leonard "J.L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, Canada, was the president and driving force behind the successful development of Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
of
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
, Koch wrote the screenplay for Mission to MoscowMission to Moscow is a 1943 drama directed by Michael Curtiz, and book of the same name by Ambassador Joseph E. Davies.The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and is one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American...
(1943). The movie subsequently spawned controversy because of its positive portrayal of the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
. After the war, Koch was fired by Jack Warner after he was criticized by the House Un-American Activities CommitteeThe House Committee on Un-American Activities was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC) for his political views. Koch was blacklisted by Hollywood in 1951.
After being blacklisted, Koch moved to the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
with other blacklisted writers where he wrote for five years under the pseudonyms "Peter Howard" and "Howard Rodney".
Howard Koch died in 1995 in Kingston, New YorkKingston is a city in Ulster County, New York, United States. It is north of New York City and south of Albany along the Hudson River. The population was 23,456 at the 2000 census...
. He lived in nearby Woodstock, New York.