The Last Cinemogul

Last week, after picking out the site for his tomb and announcing that he would probably die soon, Cinemogul Harry Cohn, 66, president of Columbia Pictures Corp., suffered a coronary thrombosis in Phoenix, Ariz., died in a wailing ambulance on the way to the hospital. A career that paralleled the great, glittering days of the cinema had outlasted the great days themselves.

Traffic in Souls, a 1913 five-reeler about white slavery, was New York-born Harry Cohn's first picture. Returning 79 times its $5,700 cost, it taught him that 1) big money could be made from a small investment and 2) "the public wants sex." In 1920, with brother Jack and Joe Brandt, he founded the C.B.C. Company, forerunner of Columbia, on an initial outlay of $250. After the Cohns had bought out Brandt's interest in 1929, Harry took over as president.

The man whom Ben Hecht dubbed "The White Fang" ran Columbia as if he were the master of an ancient trireme. He had no illusions about his popularity--and cared less. "If you print anything good about me," he once told a reporter, "nobody will believe it." He got the most out of his staff by forcing them to defend their ideas against withering blasts of personal abuse, vulgarity and threats, on the theory that only the best ideas could withstand such a test. His methods paid off. While other film companies were bending under the Depression, Columbia showed increasing profits by turning out such topflight pictures as It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Harry Cohn borrowed stars and paid them by the day, concentrated on low-cost productions, stayed out of the chain theater business. And Cohn-made names began to glitter--Clark Gable, Director Frank Capra, Robert Montgomery, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Judy Holliday.

Despite his penny pinching, gambling brought Harry Cohn his biggest thrills and his greatest triumphs at the box office; e.g., no one else liked the chances of The Jolson Story, From Here to Eternity or Picnic. Cohn made millions on them.

Columbia was one of the first major studios to recognize the inevitable and get into the production of TV films (Screen Gems, Inc.). But with TV's arrival came the end of Hollywood's unchallenged era. Last week, just before Harry Cohn died, Columbia issued a financial report showing the largest semi-annual loss ($820,000) in the company's history.

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