Sidney Coe Howard

Sidney Coe Howard (June 26, 1891 – August 23, 1939) was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.

Early life

Howard was born in Oakland, California, the son of Helen Louise (née Coe) and John L. Howard. John was the councilman of Oakland and the President of several companies, including the Western Fuel Company, which succeeded the Hudson's Bay Company. Helen was a professional organist and piano teacher. Howard's paternal grandfather emigrated from Antrim, Ireland, in 1848, settling in Philadelphia. Howard's father and maternal grandfather helped open up the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to the shipping trade. Helen was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Coe. They are descended from Robert Coe, a 17th-century colonist who migrated to America from England.

Howard graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1915 and went on to Harvard University to study playwriting under George Pierce Baker in his legendary "47 workshop." (Other alumni of Baker's class included Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Philip Barry and S. N. Behrman. Howard became good friends with Behrman.)

Along with other students of Harvard professor A. Piatt Andrew, Howard volunteered with Andrew's American Field Service, serving in France and the Balkans during World War I. After the war, Howard made use of his proficiency at foreign languages and translated a number of literary works from French, Spanish, Hungarian, and German. A liberal intellectual whose politics became progressively more left-wing over the years, he also wrote articles about labor issues for The New Republic and served as literary editor for the original Life Magazine.