The Playwrights Database
HOWARD KOCH
(1901 - 1995)Nationality: USA
email: n/a Website: n/a
Literary Agent: n/a
Howard E. Koch, outstanding author of radio scripts, plays and screenplays, was born in New York City and grew up in Kingston, New York. He was a graduate of St. Stephen's College (now Bard College) and received a law degree from Columbia in 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) were produced on Broadway. His radio work in the 1930s as a writer for the CBS Mercury Theater on the Air included the famous Orson Welles radio drama The War Of the Worlds (1938), which caused a nationwide panic for its documentary-like portrayal of an invasion of monsters from the planet Mars. In 1940 he launched his career in Hollywood, collaborating on the screenplay for The Sea Hawk (1940). Screenplays written since then include The Letter (1940), Sergeant York (1941), Casablanca (1942), Mission to Moscow (1943), Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) and No Sad Songs for Me (1950). He won an Academy Award for collaboration on the best screenplay of 1942 for Casablanca. Mission to Moscow eventually led to Koch's blacklisting in 1951. This wartime film, which portrayed Stalin and the Soviet Union positively, ironically was written at the request of President Roosevelt and Jack Warner. As a result of the blacklist, he moved with his family to Europe and eventually took up residence in the United Kingdom with other blacklisted writers where he wrote for five years for film and television under the pseudonyms "Peter Howard" and "Anne Rodney." In 1956, he returned to the United States and settled in Woodstock, New York, where he continued to write screenplays and books and remained actively committed to progressive political and social justice causes. Howard Koch died 1995 in Kingston, New York and is survived by wife, Anne and son, Peter.
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below is a list of Howard Koch's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Nightshade War Of the Worlds, TheNightshade
Synopsis:
The effect of the McCarthy Communist witch hunt on an innocent fellow traveller
Notes:
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1st Produced:
New Theatre, New York 1987
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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Genre:
Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Top of PageWar Of the Worlds, The
Synopsis:
"We interrupt this broadcast. . . . ."
Notes:
Written by Orson Wells And Howard Koch. From the original radio broadcast of October 1938. Based on the book by H G Wells
1st Produced:
Raw Space, New York 2002
Organisations:
Genesis ensemble Repertory Inc
1st Published:
Playscripts.com, NY -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Science Fiction Drama
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: - Other: 6 either
Further Reference:
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