Gloria Katz

Gloria Katz (October 25, 1942 – November 25, 2018) was an American screenwriter and producer renowned for her collaborations with director George Lucas and her husband, Willard Huyck, on seminal films including the Oscar-nominated American Graffiti (1973) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).

Born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family and raised in Beverly Hills, Katz initially studied English at the University of California, Berkeley, before pursuing a master's degree in Russian studies at UCLA, where she shifted her focus to film after becoming intrigued by her peers' work in the medium. She met Huyck, a fellow aspiring filmmaker at USC, through mutual friends in the early 1960s, and the couple married in 1969, forming a creative partnership that spanned decades and produced one daughter, Rebecca, born in 1983.

She grew up in a Jewish family in a middle-class household in the Los Angeles area, often described by friends as a "Jewish princess from Beverly Hills." Her father, Reuben Katz, owned a truck terminal, while her mother, Pauline (Wallach) Katz, managed the home. Katz had a brother, Stephen M. Katz, who later pursued a career in film as a cinematographer and producer.