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Art Cohn
ART COHN (April 5, 1909 - March 22, 1958) was an American sportswriter, screenwriter and author.
Born in New York City, he spent his childhood in Schenectady, New York. He launched his writing car...view moreART COHN (April 5, 1909 - March 22, 1958) was an American sportswriter, screenwriter and author.
Born in New York City, he spent his childhood in Schenectady, New York. He launched his writing career in Long Beach, California, as a sports writer for the Long Beach Sun and Press-Telegram, going on from there to the Oakland, California, Tribune, where he was Sports Editor for seven years.
World War II took him from New Guinea to the Middle East, and finally to Ceylon, as a war correspondent for International News Service. In 1947 Mark Hellinger brought him into the motion picture industry. The first film produced by Cohn, The Set-Up, was awarded the International Critics Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival in 1949, and was hailed by American and European critics as the greatest fight picture ever made. As the personal representative of Howard Hughes, then head of R.K.O. pictures, Cohn collaborated with Roberto Rossellini on the screenplay of Stromboli, starring Ingrid Bergman.
Returning to Hollywood, Mr. Cohn wrote and produced nearly a dozen motion pictures before he, his wife and one of their sons left on what was to be a three-month holiday to visit the Rossellinis. They stayed in Italy two years; Mr. Cohn wrote four pictures for Italian motion picture companies, and the Cohns traveled in many countries, climaxing their European stay with a trip to Israel in 1955. When the Cohns returned to Hollywood, Cohn completed The Joker Is Wild, his biography of the famous comedian Joe E. Lewis (1955). He also adapted the book for the motion picture of the same title.
At the time of his tragic death in the plane crash on March 22, 1958, which also killed Broadway theatre and Hollywood film producer Mike Todd, pilot Bill Verner and co-pilot Tom Barclay, Cohn had nearly completed Mr. Todd’s biography, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd. It was finished by his wife, who constructed the final two chapters from the copious notes Mr. Cohn had taken.view less