Vienna-born Walter Reisch established his first contacts in the film industry while still a student. At 17 he was Director's Assistant to Alexander Korda and wrote his first comedy; later he made screenwriting his profession. Reisch moved to Berlin in 1927 where he made a name for himself as a writer of light comedies. He also wrote the first two German talkies (Dich hab‘ ich geliebt and Die Nacht gehört uns, both 1929). Because he was Jewish, he left Germany in 1933 and returned to Austria. But there, too, his work could no longer be published under his own name - after all, the Austrian productions were eventually to be sold to their German neighbours. In 1935, he created a sensation in this respect: with actress Paula Wessely in the lead role, he directed his first film, Episode, which was released under his own name in Germany.

A year later he went to England, where he directed another film (Men are not Gods, German: Männer sind keine Götter). In September 1937, he moved to Hollywood. Further successful screenplays followed; for instance, together with Billy Wilder (with whom he had collaborated in Berlin) and Charles Brackett, he wrote the screenplay for Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) and the script for Comrade X (1940), which was directed by King Vidor. The latter earned him his first Oscar nomination. However it was not until 1953 that he won an award with his screenplay for Titanic. Reisch became an American citizen in 1943. After the war he worked again in Germany as a director. 

Further reading:
Weniger, Kay: „Es wird im Leben dir mehr genommen als gegeben…“ Lexikon der aus Deutschland und Österreich emigrierten Filmschaffenden 1933 bis 1945. Eine Gesamtübersicht. Hamburg: Acabus 2011, S. 418-420. 

Selected works:
Die Nacht gehört uns, 1929
FP1 antwortet nicht, 1932
Episode, 1935
Ninotschka, 1939
Comrade X, 1940
Titanic (dt. Der Untergang der Titanic), 1953