Leonard Schrader, film writer, was born on November 30, 1943. He died on November 2, 2006, aged 62.

Leonard Schrader won an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of Kiss of the Spider Woman, a 1985 drama with Raúl Juliá as a South American political prisoner and William Hurt as his gay cellmate who invents fantastic movie plots.

But Schrader wrote only a handful of films and directed just one, Naked Tango (1991). He was overshadowed by his younger brother and collaborator, Paul, who wrote Taxi Driver (1976). Peter Biskind’s influential cinema history, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998), in which they featured prominently, had one chapter subtitled “How Paul Schrader crawled over the back of his brother . . .”

The Schraders were born into an abusive Dutch Calvinist family in Michigan. The parents forbade them to watch films or listen to music and whipped them almost daily. In the late 1960s Leonard moved to Japan, to avoid the draft, and taught American literature.

While in Japan he devised The Yakuza (1974) and teamed up with his brother to write it. It sold for $325,000, purportedly a record for an original script. But Paul got more money and screenplay credit, while Leonard had to make do with a credit for the story.

The brothers worked together on the crime drama Blue Collar (1978) and the biopic Mishima (1985). They shared the writing credit, with Leonard’s Japanese wife, Chieko, and Paul also directed the film. However, Leonard fell out so badly with his brother that they stopped talking. Thereafter he taught screenwriting in California.

Joseph Hayes, writer and producer, was born on August 2, 1918. He died on September 11, 2006, aged 88.

Joseph Hayes was the author of The Desperate Hours (1954), an ingenious hostage drama made into films starring Humphrey Bogart (1955) and Mickey Rourke (1990).

By keeping a suburban family hostage, three escaped prisoners determine to meet up with the girl who has kept their takings safe. Some members of the family have to go about their daily routine, while money and girl are en route. It is neatly plotted, with multiple dilemmas.

Hayes had thought of becoming a priest, but seminary life soon depressed him; he moved to New York after marrying a writer, Marrijane Johnson, in 1938. While working as an editor at the publishing house Samuel French, he attempted playwriting and published two books as Joseph H. Arnold.

Hayes’s later work pales beside the deft density of The Hours. Among them, The Third Day (1964) — a familiar plot about amnesia — and The Long Dark Night (1974) are unduly long. Such revenge tales contrast with the many light comedies for amateur, high-school productions on which he and his wife collaborated.

Dr Betty Cowan, OBE, missionary and pioneer in rural public health, was born on May 10, 1917. She died on September 10, 2006, aged 89.