Howard, Sidney Coe

Sidney Coe Howard was born 1891 in Oakland California and attended the University of California at Berkeley (class of 1915). He went on to Harvard where he studied playwrighting under George Pierce Baker.

Along with several other students he volunteered und joined the American Field Service in June 1916. He served in Alsace with SSU 9 until December 1916, when he joined the newly formed SSU 10 unit serving with the French Army of the Orient in the Balkans. He served in Albania and Greece. He came back to Paris in June 1917 and joined the French aviation units following the militarization of the AFS in the fall of 1917.

His first play was produced on Broadway in 1921. Three years later They Knew What They Wanted was published - it won the 1925 Pulitzer Price in Drama. Howard was a prolific playwright and screenwriter. He worked at MGM in Hollywood and was famous in the late 30s. He died tragically, working on his farm in Massachussetts, in the summer of 1939.

Howard was the first posthumous nominee to win an Oscar: 1939, he won the Academy Award for an adapted screenplay for Gone with the Wind.