Gloria Katz, who died aged 76 on November 25th 0f 2018, was an Oscar-nominated Hollywood writer and director known for her longtime collaboration with George Lucas. She co-wrote his 1973 coming-of-age comedy film American Graffiti and helped with the script on Star Wars.
Often working with her husband and fellow writer Willard Huyck, the couple met through friends in the 1960s when they were both film students at UCLA and befriended Lucas.
The couple shared an Oscar nomination with Lucas for American Graffiti and secretly doctored his script for Star Wars. Katz has said they helped shape Carrie Fisher’s Star Wars character princess Leia into someone who “can take command,” not “just a beautiful woman that schlepped along to be saved.”