KING COHN

Harry Cohn was the production boss as well as major stockholder of Columbia Pictures for thirty-five years and he was as hardbitten, hardmouthed a tycoon as ever made stars tremble or directors quiver. (He held a quixotic respect for writers.) His office was an imitation of Mussolini's, a long, polished room in which everyone became weak-kneed in approaching him. He scorned everything, to see if it had strength or merit. Strangely one develops a certain admiration for him in this biography. Cohn's forte was the quality A and AA picture and he often set trends in filmmaking, while only skimpily supervising his immense B picture production. Since Columbia did not maintain a stable of stars comparable to MGM or 20th Century Fox, Cohn either raided other studios or created his own--notably Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. While twice married, he had no compunction about seducing actresses, but he kept some of his other benevolences well-hidden in order to retain his ogre image.... King Cohn has a certain restraint and a sense of being written rather than taped, and the background on many famous flicks is fascinating.