Tad Mosel (May 1, 1922 – August 24, 2008) was an American playwright and one of the leading dramatists of hour-long teleplay genre for live television during the 1950s.

Raised as a Presbyterian, he was eight years old when his father's wholesale grocery business failed following the stock market crash, and the family moved to the suburbs of New York City.

In the post-WWII years he finished at Amherst and did graduate studies at the Yale Drama School (BA), followed by a Master's at Columbia University.

He was writing plays while auditioning as an actor, and in 1949 he was on Broadway in the scene-stealing, non-speaking role of a confused private in the farce At War with the Army.

Mosel's death at age 86 of esophageal cancer came after 18 years of residency at Havenwood-Heritage Heights, a retirement community in Concord, New Hampshire, where he often lectured.