Biography
Howard E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter. Born in New York City, he graduated from St. Stephen's College (later Bard College) and Columbia Law School before practising law and turning to playwriting in the late 1920s.
His radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds for Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre broadcast in 1938 brought him to the attention of Hollywood studios. He joined Warner Bros. as a contract writer and contributed screenplays to films including The Sea Hawk (1940), The Letter (1940), Sergeant York (1941) and In This Our Life (1942). He co-wrote the screenplay for Casablanca (1942) with Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, for which the three shared the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Koch was one of the Hollywood Nineteen subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was blacklisted in the 1950s. He later worked in the United Kingdom under a pseudonym before resuming screenwriting in the United States. He died in Kingston, New York, in 1995.
