Голливудқа қара тізімге түскен драматург Говард Кох өмірі мен шығармашылығы

American playwright and screenwriter

Howard E. Koch (December 12, 1901 – August 17, 1995) was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood film studio bosses in the 1950s.

Born to a Jewish family 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).

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. Koch began playwriting in the late 1920s before he started working on radio scripts. 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. 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. 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. He also wrote Shining Victory (1941) After the war, Koch was dismissed after he was denounced as a Communist. 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. 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 In 1956, they returned to the United States and settled in Woodstock, New York. 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, 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.

Koch died at age 93 in 1995 in Kingston, New York.