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Gloria Katz (left) at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colo. on March 3, 2001.Reuters Photographer/Reuters

A Hollywood writer and director has announced the death of his wife and long-time collaborator, Gloria Katz, who co-wrote American Graffiti and helped give Princess Leia her power in Star Wars. She was 76.

Willard Huyck told the Hollywood Reporter that Ms. Katz died on Sunday, their 49th wedding anniversary, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after battling ovarian cancer.

The couple shared an Oscar nomination with director George Lucas for American Graffiti and secretly doctored his script for Star Wars. The Reporter quoted Ms. Katz as saying they shaped Carrie Fisher’s Leia into someone who “can take command,” not “just a beautiful woman that schlepped along to be saved.”

They also wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which Mr. Lucas produced, and later co-wrote Lucky Lady, Messiah of Evil, French Postcards, Best Defence, Howard the Duck and Radioland Murders.

Born in Los Angeles on Oct. 25, 1942, Ms. Katz majored in English at the University of California, Berkeley, then earned a masters in film at UCLA. In 1969, she married Mr. Huyck, a college friend of Mr. Lucas at the University of Southern California.

The Reporter quoted Ms. Katz as saying in a 2017 interview that Mr. Lucas wanted her husband “to write about cruising for American Graffiti, and I sort of came with the package.”

She said Mr. Lucas had a lot of reservations” about his Star Wars script as filming was about to begin.

“He said, ‘Polish it – write anything you want and then I’ll go over it and see what I need,' " she said. “George didn’t want anyone to know we worked on the script, so we were in a cone of silence.”

Ms. Katz said she and Mr. Huyck tried to add as much humour as possible, and wrote about 30 per cent of the film’s dialogue.

Ms. Katz was on the board of the Writers Guild, was an adviser at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, set to open next year, and served as chair of the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles.

Those she leaves include her daughter with Mr. Huyck, Rebecca.

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