SOURCE: "Script to Screen with Max Ophuls," in Film Comment, Vol. 6, No. 4, Winter, 1970-71, pp. 41-3.

In the following essay, Koch, the screenwriter for Ophuls's Letter from an Unknown Woman, reminisces about meeting and working with the director to assert that Ophuls was not an auteur, but worked closely with his screenwriters and cinematographers.

Howard Koch came to Hollywood from radio, where he had written the script of Invasion from Mars for Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. His screenplays include The Sea Hawk, The Letter, Sergeant York, Mission to Moscow, Three Strangers, The Thirteenth Letter, Loss of Innocence and The Fox. His memoir of the shooting of Casablanca, for which he wrote the dialogue, appeared in The Persistence of Vision, edited by Joseph McBride.

Mr. Koch's complete filmography may be found in the Symposium section.

During Hollywood's heyday most film productions were put together as haphazardly as the combinations...