What was the birth name of screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond?

I.A.L. Diamond’s birth name was Itek Domnici. He was born in 1920 in Ungheni, then part of Romania and now in Moldova, before his family moved to the United States when he was a child.

At Columbia University, Domnici studied journalism and wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator. He later adopted the professional name I.A.L. Diamond; the initials are often explained as a reference to the Interscholastic Algebra League, though accounts of their origin vary. In Hollywood, friends commonly called him “Iz.”

Diamond became one of the most important screenwriting collaborators of Billy Wilder. Their partnership began with Love in the Afternoon and included Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma la Douce, One, Two, Three, The Fortune Cookie, Avanti!, Fedora, and Buddy Buddy. He won an Academy Award for The Apartment and received the Academy’s Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1988. The names Itek, Isadore, and I.A.L. therefore refer to different stages of the same writer’s life.