Charles Kaufman (October 20, 1904 – May 2, 1991) was an American novelist, writer, and screenwriter.[1] As a teenager, books by Joseph Conrad inspired Kaufman to go to sea.His experiences in World War II (he was a member of a combat camera crew in the Battle of Leyte) led to a career as a screenwriter.Along with Wolfgang Reinhart he was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Screenplay in 1962 for the film Freud: The Secret Passion.In 2010, Let There Be Light, whose screenplay Kaufman wrote with John Huston, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.