Harry Cohn

Cohn was born to a working-class Jewish family in New York City. His father, Joseph Cohn, was a tailor from Germany, and his mother, Bella Joseph, was from the Pale of Settlement, Russian Empire. He left school early and had a variety of jobs, including chorus boy, fur salesman, pool hustler, shipping clerk, streetcar conductor and song plugger for a sheet music printer. He also appeared in a vaudeville act with Harry Ruby.

He entered the film industry when he got a job with Independent Moving Pictures (which had recently merged to become part of Universal Film Manufacturing Company), where his elder brother, Jack Cohn, was already employed. The brothers made their first film there, Traffic in Souls. Cohn became personal secretary to Universal president, Carl Laemmle.

In 1919, Cohn joined his brother and fellow IMP employee Joe Brandt, to found CBC Film Sales Corporation. The initials officially stood for Cohn, Brandt, and Cohn, but Hollywood wags noted the company's low-budget, low-class efforts and nicknamed CBC "Corned Beef and Cabbage." Harry Cohn managed the company's film production in Hollywood, while his brother managed its finances from New York. The relationship between the two brothers was not always good, and Brandt, finding the partnership stressful, eventually sold his third of the company to Harry, who took over as president, by which time the firm had been renamed Columbia Pictures Corporation.

Most of Columbia's early work was action fare starring rock-jawed leading man Jack Holt. Columbia was unable to shake off its stigma as a Poverty Row studio until 1934, when director Frank Capra's Columbia comedy It Happened One Night swept the Academy Awards. Exhibitors who formerly wouldn't touch Columbia products became steady customers. As a horizontally integrated company that only controlled production and distribution, Columbia had been at the mercy of theater owners. Columbia expanded its scope to offer moviegoers a regular program of economically made features, short subjects, serials, travelogues, sports reels, and cartoons. Columbia released a few "class" productions each year (Lost Horizon, Holiday, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Jolson Story, Gilda, All the King's Men, etc.), but depended on its popular "budget" productions to keep the company solvent. During Cohn's tenure, the studio always turned a profit.

Cohn did not build a stable of movie stars like other studios. Instead, he generally signed actors who usually worked for more expensive studios (Wheeler & Woolsey, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Humphrey Bogart, Dorothy Lamour, Mickey Rooney, Chester Morris, Warren William, Warner Baxter, Sabu, Gloria Jean, Margaret O'Brien, etc.) to attract a pre-sold audience. Columbia's own stars generally rose from the ranks of small-part actors and featured players (Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, Jacqueline Wells, Lloyd Bridges, Bruce Bennett, Jock Mahoney, etc.). Some of Columbia's producers and directors also graduated from lesser positions as actors, writers, musicians, and assistant directors.

Cohn was married to Rose Barker from 1923 to 1941, and to actress Joan Perry (1911–1996) from July 1941 until his death in 1958.

His brothers all worked at Columbia. As well as co-founder Jack, the eldest brother Maxwell was a shorts subject producer and Nathan was the New York division manager. Cohn's nephew, Ralph, one of Jack Cohn's three sons, founded Screen Gems. Another of Jack's sons, Robert, was also a Columbia executive. Maxwell's daughter was Leonore "Lee" Cohn Annenberg, the wife of billionaire publishing magnate Walter Annenberg of Philadelphia.

Accusations of mob connections

Cohn has been accused of having ties with organized crime. In 1957, mobsters threatened Sammy Davis Jr. with violence because the performer was involved with actress Kim Novak, who was under contract with Columbia Pictures. There are several accounts of what happened, but most agree that the organized crime figures who threatened Davis were close to Cohn; according to these accounts, as Novak was white, Cohn was worried a backlash against the interracial relationship would hurt the studio. According to one account, Cohn called racketeer John Roselli, who was told to inform Davis that he must stop seeing Novak. To try to scare Davis, Roselli had him kidnapped for a few hours. Another account relates that the threat was conveyed to Davis's father by mobster Mickey Cohen.

The threat message to Davis was "leave Novak and marry a Black woman, or you’ll lose your other eye". In response, Davis sought the protection of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana, who said that he could protect him in Chicago and Las Vegas but not California. Cohn was one of the inspirations (as well as Louis B. Mayer) for the character of studio boss Jack Woltz in the 1972 crime film The Godfather.

Sexual harassment allegations

Various accounts have claimed that Cohn asked for and expected sex from female stars in exchange for employment. According to writer Joseph McBride, Jean Arthur quit the film industry when her Columbia Pictures contract expired in 1944 because Cohn was known to harass actresses. When Joan Crawford was subjected to Cohn's advances after signing a three-picture contract with Columbia, she quickly stopped him by saying "Keep it in your pants, Harry. I'm having lunch with Joan [his wife] and the boys [his children] tomorrow."

Rita Hayworth's relationship with Cohn was fraught with aggravation. Her biography, If This Was Happiness, describes how Cohn was angered when she refused his demands to have sex with him. However, he kept her under contract because she made him money. During these Columbia years, each did their best to irritate the other despite their successful working relationship. Cohn tried to groom Mary Castle as Hayworth's successor.