Harry Cohn

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 Cohn, who took over as president. The firm was now known as 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 product 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. Read Less

However, business was business to Cohn: he forced Curly Howard of the Stooges to keep working after suffering a series of minor strokes, which led to a further deterioration of Howard's health and his eventual retirement. Cohn was always fond of, "those lousy little 'B' pictures," and kept making them, along with two-reel comedies and serials, after other studios had abandoned them.

Other claims made about Cohn include the rumor that he demanded sex from female stars in exchange for employment, although similar stories were connected to many producers in Hollywood at the time. Harry Cohn's relationship with Rita Hayworth was fraught with aggravation. In Hayworth's biography If This Was Happiness, she described how she refused to sleep with Cohn and how this angered him. However, because Hayworth was such a valuable property Cohn kept her on, making money. For the years they worked together, each did their best to irritate the other despite their lengthy work relationship, which produced good results. At one point Cohn wanted to groom Mary Castle as Hayworth's successor. Kim Novak was another Columbia star who had to endure similar treatment from Cohn. 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 and the boys wife and children tomorrow." Read Less