Harold Livingston
USA
Biography
Harold Livingston (1925–2022) was a novelist, Hollywood screenwriter, and World War II U.S. Army Air Forces veteran who flew for the Israel Air Transport Command during the 1948 War of Independence, helping smuggle aircraft and munitions to the embattled Jewish state.
After the war he returned to California and launched a writing career: his 1954 novel The Coasts of the Earth, drawn in part from his service in Israel, won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. He went on to write six more books and the screenplay for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and later appeared in the documentary Above and Beyond (produced by Nancy Spielberg, directed by Roberta Grossman).
Read his obituary — “Hollywood Writer Fought for U.S. and Israel,” by Tom Tugend for JTA →
Works
- The Coasts of the Earth (1954) — novel; winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award.
- Six further books over his writing career.
- Screenplay for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
- Featured subject of the documentary Above and Beyond (2014, dir. Roberta Grossman, prod. Nancy Spielberg).
- Obituary: “Hollywood Writer Fought for U.S. and Israel,” by Tom Tugend for JTA (2022).