Howard E. Koch

 Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995)

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 then 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. However, his screenplay for Mission to Moscow (1943), which portrayed Joseph Stalin and the Soviets in a positive manner, led to his firing from Warner Brothers. 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. Following this, Koch and his wife Anne took up residence in the United Kingdom with other blacklisted writers where they wrote for five years for film and television (The Adventures of Robin Hood among them) under the pseudonyms "Peter Howard" and "Anne Rodney".

They later returned to New York, and were outspoken supporters of progressive causes and politics. Howard Koch died in 1995 in Kingston, New York, he was 93 years old.