Harry Cohn

Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn, circa 1934
Born	(1891-07-23)July 23, 1891 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	February 27, 1958(1958-02-27) (aged 66) Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.
Occupation	Film producer and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation
Years active	1919 to 1958
Spouse(s)	Rose Barker (1923–1941) Joan Perry (1941–1958)

Harry Cohn (July 23, 1891 – February 27, 1958) was the American film president, film producer and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation.

Cohn was born to a working-class Jewish family in New York City. His mother, Bella Joseph, was from Russia (in what is today Poland), and his father, Joseph Cohen, was a tailor from Germany. After working for a time as a streetcar conductor, and then as a promoter for a sheet music printer, he got a job with Universal Pictures, where his brother, Jack Cohn, was already employed. In 1919, Cohn joined his brother and 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 Jack Cohn managed its finances from New York alongside Brandt. In a bid to change its image, the company changed its name to Columbia Pictures Corporation in 1924. Columbia was the female personification of America, and Cohn believed that she would be an effective marketing symbol.

The relationship between the two brothers was not always good. In 1932, Brandt, finding the partnership stressful, sold his third of the company to Harry Cohn, who took over as president while remaining based in Hollywood.

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 would not touch Columbia products became steady customers. As a horizontally integrated company that only controlled production and distribution, Columbia had previously 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 would release 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.