CAUSE: In the winter of 1964 Cochran and an all-female crew set sail in his 40-ft schooner, The Rogue, from San Pedro. The plan was to scout for locations for future films but the press believed that it was just a publicity stunt. The female crew disembarked in Ensenada and Cochran sailed alone to Acapulco. There he advertised for another all-female crew and hired three friends – Eugenia Bautista, 25, Eva Montero Catsellanos, 19, and Lorenza Infante de la Rose who was just 14. The Rogue was intercepted by the Coast Guard off Port Champerico in Guatemala on June 27, 1965 where Cochran’s body was discovered apparently dead from acute infectious oedema. The three crew members, demented with thirst and heatstroke, were interviewed by the authorities and they said that Cochran had died shortly after 5am on June 15, leaving them helpless on the Pacific Ocean until the Coast Guard came upon them. In an interview given to UPI, the news agency, the women said that the boat had become caught up in a hurricane and Cochran battled for two days and two nights before he died. Cochran’s body was badly decomposed when it was brought ashore. Rumours persist to this day that Cochran was murdered. He suffered from blinding headaches and fainting spells and one day awoke paralysed, unable to move anything but his head. The symptoms resembled a poisoning and when the police boarded the vessel, they suspected foul play. The coroner’s verdict of a lung infection did nothing to allay the suspicions. His former co-star Merle Oberon tried to use her influence to push for further police investigations but without success. Then Cochran’s estranged third wife came forward to claim her share of what was thought to be an estate valued at $160,000. There was a shock for her when the estate totalled just $60,000, Cochran having given his 85-year-old mother $100,000 a few months before his death. Cochran’s daughter by his first marriage, Xandria, from whom he was also estranged, also wanted her share of the money. In the end because a will could not be found, the estranged wife and the estranged daughter shared $25,000. Cochran is buried in Lot 4, Block 238 of Monterey Cemetery in California.
Iron Eyes Cody
(OSKIE CODY)
Born April 3, 1906
Died January 4, 1999
‘The Crying Indian’. Cherokee Iron Eyes Cody was born in the Oklahoma Territory and began in movies when his father’s ranch was used as a location for a Paramount movie and he ended up being hired as a technical adviser. In all he appeared in over 200 films, becoming the most famous Native American Indian actor in the world. In the Seventies his face, with a tear rolling down it, became famous as part of an ecology campaign. In the usually reliable Katz his death is reported as having occurred in 1991. His films included Back To God’s Country (1919), Fighting Caravans (1931), Oklahoma Jim (1931), Texas Pioneers (1932), Rustlers Of Red Dog (1935), Toll Of The Desert (1936), Ride, Ranger, Ride (1936), Custer’s Last Stand (1936) as Brown Fox, The Riders Of The Whistling Skull (1937), Wild Bill Hickok (1938), Union Pacific (1939), Young Buffalo Bill (1940), Young Bill Hickok (1940), Saddlemates (1941) as Black Eagle, Springtime In The Rockies (1942) as White Cloud, Perils Of Nyoka (1942), King Of The Stallions (1942), Bowery Buckaroos (1947) as Indian Joe, Train To Alcatraz (1948) as Geronimo, Massacre River (1949) as Chief Yellowstone, Cherokee Uprising (1950) as Longknife, Son Of Paleface (1952) as Chief Yellow Cloud, Heller In Pink Tights (1960) and Ernest Goes To Camp (1987). He married Bertha Darkcloud known to all as Birdie (b. 1906, d. 1977) in 1924 and they had two sons: Arthur and Robert. He attempted suicide after the death of his wife. He then began a relationship with his wife’s former secretary, Sandy Redhawk, at the suggestion of Birdie as she lay on her deathbed.
CAUSE: Iron Eyes Cody died of natural causes in Los Angeles, California, aged 92.
FURTHER READING: Iron Eyes: My Life As A Hollywood Indian – Iron Eyes Cody as told to Collin Perry (London: Frederick Muller, 1982).
Herman Cohen
Born August 27, 1925
Died June 2, 2002
Schlockmeister. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he attended Central High School. Cohen’s film career began when he was 12 and he got a job as the assistant to a janitor in a local cinema. He was paid in free tickets. After serving in the military, he joined the publicity department of Columbia Pictures. His first on-screen credit came with Bride Of The Gorilla (1951) where he was assistant producer. He was associate producer of Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), in which Bela Lugosi meets a gorilla from Brooklyn. His big break came in 1957 with I Was A Teenage Werewolf, a drive-in film that cost less than $100,000 and was savaged by the critics for its tacky props, ham acting and corny lines. But it became a surprise hit, taking more than $2 million at the box office. It starred Michael Landon as a troubled teen, Tony Rivers, who turns to a hypnotherapist (Whit Bissell) to cure his aggression. Instead, the evil doctor gives him an experimental potion that turns him into a werewolf. The appearance of the werewolf – a furry beast with claws and fangs, dressed in jacket and jeans, became an icon of the teen horror genre. Cohen was warned that the movie would destroy his reputation but he ignored the naysayers and even made an uncredited cameo appearance in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock. The film was later re-released as “starring Michael Landon, star of Bonanza ”. Cohen went on to make a series of similar pictures, most of which featured teenagers being turned into monsters by adults. They included the double billed I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (1957) and Blood Of Dracula (1957) (which offered free smelling salts to patrons and advised not to eat before seeing the film). In 1959 Cohen moved to England where he made a series of grisly films about the sadistic excesses of serial killers. In one of the genre, Horrors Of The Black Museum (1959), a crime writer orchestrates a series of gruesome murders using devices such as a pair of binoculars which jab spikes into the user’s eyes. Cohen began to work with the ageing and temperamental Joan Crawford to make Berserk! (1968), in which she plays a ringmaster in a circus where the performers are murdered one by one, and Trog (1970), Crawford’s 81st and last movie, in which she is a female scientist who tries to train a man-ape discovered down a pothole. In both films Cohen begged Crawford not to drink in the mornings before shooting, ignoring her protestations that she was just “a little sipper”. Crawford insisted on providing her own unsuitably abbreviated wardrobe. “Save your money, Herm,” she told him. “I’ve been hustling clothes all my life.” After Craze (1973), a comic horror starring Jack Palance, Trevor Howard and Diana Dors, Cohen retired from producing and formed a film distribution company. He never married.
CAUSE: Cohen died aged 76 of throat cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. He was buried in Clover Hill Park Cemetery, 3607 West 14 Mile, Royal Oak, Detroit.
Harry Cohn
Born July 23, 1891
Died February 27, 1958
Hollywood’s most loathed mogul. The second son of a German immigrant tailor, 5́ 10˝ Harry Cohn was born in New York, New York. He became a pool hustler, a fur salesman and then a record plugger before landing a job as Carl Laemmle’s secretary in 1918. With brother Jacob, known as Jack (b. New York, New York, October 27, 1889, d. 1956 of an embolism) and Joseph Brandt he went on to found CBC Film Sales Company (nicknamed ‘Corned Beef and Cabbage’) which, on January 10, 1924, became Columbia Pictures Corporation, where he created a régime of despotic autocracy. He would brandish a riding crop and bang it down on his desk to intimidate underlings. The company offices were on Sunset Boulevard, an area known as ‘Poverty Row’. However, Cohn steered Columbia through the advent of talkies, the Great Depression and the coming of television. Cohn was generally despised by the Hollywood community. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper stated: “You had to stand in line to hate him.” Screenwriter Ben Hecht nicknamed him ‘White Fang’. He modelled his office on that of Mussolini, whom he admired for making the trains run on time; a framed photograph of Il Duce sat on his desk. Cohn could rarely speak a sentence without a cuss-word and spied on his employees using informers and hidden microphones. However, he spared no expense to cultivate and promote the careers of his favourites, including Rita Hayworth (who annoye
d him by constantly getting married, which eroded her box-office appeal) and Kim Novak. He revelled in his notoriety (“I don’t get ulcers, I give them”) and his charitable acts were kept a closely guarded secret. He liked to sack people – usually on Christmas Eve. For some time there developed a power struggle to be the head of the company between Cohn and his brother which came to a head in 1932 when Jack successfully foiled his brother’s attempt to topple him and consolidated his power base. The megalomaniac studio boss in the Robert Aldrich film The Big Knife (1955) was supposedly based on Cohn. He had a unique way of judging films: “By the itch of my ass.” Cohn would watch a film until he started to squirm in his seat and that was when he knew it was going wrong. No squirming, it was a hit. And it seemed to work for him. Among the films he produced were Only A Shop Girl (1922), Yesterday’s Wife (1923), Innocence (1923), Discontented Husbands (1924), When Husbands Flirt (1925), Birds Of Prey (1927), Sally In Our Alley (1927), Stage Kisses (1927), Lady Raffles (1928), Broadway Daddies (1928), Ransom (1928), Beware Of Blondes (1928), Virgin Lips (1928), Sinner’s Parade (1928), Trial Marriage (1929), Broadway Scandals (1929), Acquitted (1929), Wall Street (1929), Murder On The Roof (1930), Personality (1930), Vengeance (1930), Guilty? (1930), Sisters (1930), Ladies Must Play (1930), Madonna Of The Streets (1930), Platinum Blonde (1931), Forbidden (1932) and It Happened One Night (1934). He married twice. His first wife was actress Rose Barker, whom he married on September 18, 1923, and then divorced on July 28, 1941. His second wife was former actress Joan Perry (b. Pensacola, Florida July 7, 1911, as Elizabeth Miller, d. Montecito, California, September 16, 1996, from emphysema) whom he wedded in a room of the St Regis Hotel in New York City on July 31, 1941. Their daughter, Jobella, died 30 minutes after her birth in 1943. Cohn was not charged by the doctor, who said it was not his custom to issue an invoice in circumstances where he was powerless to save a baby. Cohn asked him why his daughter had died and was told that not enough research had been done into infant mortality for an accurate answer. The very next day Cohn sent the doctor a cheque for $100,000 to fund research. Cohn went on to have two sons: John Perry, b. April 18, 1945, at 5.45am (at the studio Cohn opened a bottle of 100-year-old brandy and offered a small glass to a dozen of his top executives. One proposed a toast to the new baby “May he be just like his father” at which Cohn knocked the glass out of the man’s hand. “Don’t ever say that!” he raged, “I want my son to have friends.”) and Harrison Perry b. 1946 (who later changed his name to Harry Cohn, Jr); and an adopted daughter, Catherine Perry. Joan Perry Cohn went on to marry actor Laurence Harvey on October 17, 1968, and divorced him in 1972.
CAUSE: He died in Phoenix, Arizona, of a heart attack, aged 66. As was his custom he was staying at the Biltmore Hotel when he fell ill. He was placed in an ambulance and driven to St Joseph’s Hospital but died a block away. Mrs Cohn told a priest that in his dying moments Cohn had called out the name of Jesus Christ. The priest told Mrs Cohn that, for this reason, her husband should be baptised a Christian and this was duly done. His funeral, on March 2, 1958, was non-denominational and no reference was made to the fact that Cohn was Jewish. It was held on a Sunday (to allow attendance and so as not to disrupt studio filming) and was one of the most well-attended funerals in Hollywood history prompting Red Skelton to comment, “Well, it proves what they always say: give the people what they want to see and they’ll come out for it.” In his will, written on St Valentine’s Day 1957, Cohn had ordered that no funeral service take place. Columbia executives persuaded Mrs Cohn to ignore her husband’s wish. He was buried in Hollywood Memorial Park, 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90038 because, “It’s right by the water and I can see the studio from it.” FURTHER READING: King Cohn – Bob Thomas (London: Barrie & Rockliffe, 1967).
Claudette Colbert
(LILY CLAUDETTE CHAUCHOIN)
Born September 13, 1903
Died July 30, 1996
‘The Fretting Frog’. Arriving in New York from her native Paris when still a child, the 5́4½˝ Colbert had dreams of becoming a fashion designer and then a successful Broadway actress. Leaving school she enrolled in The Art Students’ League and worked in a dress shop to pay her fees and living expenses. She finally got to Broadway in 1923, appearing in The Wild Westcotts and adopting the stage name Claudette Colbert. She played leading roles on the Great White Way for two years from 1925 until deciding she wanted to give films a try. Her first feature, Frank Capra’s For The Love Of Mike (1927), was a disaster. When the Great Depression forced the closure of many theatres, she became stuck with working in films, much to her initial dismay. The Lady Lies (1929) and The Hole In The Wall (1929) were more successful. Her appearance with Frederic March in Manslaughter (1930) was the first in which her star was obviously beginning to rise. However, it was when Colbert began appearing in talkies, such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign Of The Cross (1932) as Poppaea, and appeared taking a bath in asses’ milk in Cleopatra (1934) that she really shone. She won her only Oscar for the part of Ellie Andrews in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934). Legend has it that Colbert was convinced she wouldn’t win and she decided to get away from Hollywood on the night of the ceremony, only to be rushed back on the pillion of a motorbike to accept the prize wearing a brown felt hat and her travelling clothes. The following year she was again nominated, for Private Worlds (1935) as psychiatrist Dr Jane Everest. She also appeared in I Cover The Waterfront (1933) as Julie Kirk, Four Frightened People (1934) as Judy Cavendish, She Married Her Boss (1935) as Julia Scott, I Met Him In Paris (1937) as Kay Denham, Maid Of Salem (1937) as Barbara Clarke, Midnight (1939) as Eve Peabody, Skylark (1941) as Lydia Kenyon, No Time For Love (1943) as Katherine Grant and Since You Went Away (1944) as Anne Hilton, for which she was nominated for her third Academy Award. Although she didn’t retire until 1992 Colbert’s last major movie hit came with The Egg And I (1947) in which she played Betty MacDonald, a sophisticated New Yorker who married a chicken farmer. “Part of ageing gracefully is acceptance of the prominence of youth in our profession. In my final picture Parrish, I shared the screen with Troy Donahue and Connie Stevens and so on … I’ve never objected to youth, but I’m less happy about untalented actors and salacious story-lines.” Convinced the right side of her face left a lot to be desired, she insisted she was only ever photographed from the left side, going so far as, so legend has it, putting green paint on the right side so the cameraman couldn’t film it. She was aware of what was required to be a star in Hollywood, once commenting: “The casting couch? There was only one of us ever made it to stardom without it – that was Bette Davis.” Twice married, she first walked up the aisle with actor-director Norman Foster (b. Richmond, Indiana, December 13, 1900, as Norman Hoeffer, d. 1976) in 1928, divorcing him on August 30, 1935. (He went on to marry Sally Blane.) Bizarrely, they never lived together. Four months later, on Christmas Eve, she married Dr Joel Pressman in Yuma, Arizona. They were together until his death from cancer in Los Angeles on February 26, 1968. In fact, ‘together’ is something of an exaggeration. Colbert claimed they stayed married because each maintained a separate residence. This gave her free rein to live a bisexual lifestyle which she did, having affairs with, among others, Marlene Dietrich. The New York Times in its obituary stated: “She could appear worldly and sophisticated yet down to earth, and this quality, combined with acute attention to camera angles, lighting and other professional details, helped her to sustain a remarkably durable career that encompassed more than 60 films and many stage appearances.”
CAUSE: She died in Cobblers Cove, Barbados, aged 92, of natural causes.
Barbara Colby
Born July 2, 1940
Died July 24, 1975
A riddle. Colby was the ex-daughter-in-law of Ethel Merman and had only bit parts in films such as California Split (1974) but appeared on television including: Columbo: Murder By The Book (1971) as Lily LaSanka, The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and an early appearance in Gunsmoke. She also appeared on stage.
CAUSE: She was leaving her yoga class in Los Angeles when she was shot by two men. At the time she was appearing in the play Murderous Angels, the plot of which concerns someone who is murdered for revenge.
Charlotte Coleman
Born April 3, 1968
Died November 14, 2001
Eccentric talent. Charlotte Ninon Coleman was born in London, the elder daughter of the producer-director Francis Coleman and the actress Ann Beach (b. Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, June 7, 1938). Sister Lisa Coleman (b. Charing Cross, London, 10 July, 1970) is also an actress and former nude model. Charlotte was educated at St Michael’s Primary School, Highgate, and Camden School for Girls – from where she was expelled – and also attended the Anna Scher Children’s Theatre in Islington. Something of a wild child, she told one interviewer, “I graffitied the house, I was smoking at 12, had boyfriends at 13, lost my virginity early, had my nose pierced at 14, shaved my head completely and then had a bluebird tattooed on my bottom when I was 15.” She left her family’s home in Muswell Hill, north London, at 14 to live with a friend. Charlotte Coleman’s break came playing Sue Peters in the children’s television series Worzel Gummidge (1979) and then played the lead role, Marmalade Atkins, in Educating Marmalade (1981). Coleman paid for her own education at the extremely liberal school, Dartington Hall in Devon, from the money she earned from Marmalade Atkins. She made her film début in Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale (1989) and played Ros in Sweet Nothing (1990). Her next television role was the controversial lesbian drama Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1990) in which she played Jess and romped naked with Cathryn Bradshaw. She found her lesbian scenes too embarrassing to watch at screenings, but she won the Royal Television Society’s 1991 Best Performance Award for a Scripted Fictional Performance and was nominated for a BAFTA Best Actress award. Another television series, Freddie And Max (1990), followed in which Coleman starred with Anne Bancroft. She was in Map Of The Human Heart (1992) as Julie and then co-starred in the film that was to rejuvenate the British cinema and make Hugh Grant a star. Richard Curtis’ Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994) was the most successful British film in many a long year. Coleman won a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Scarlet, Hugh Grant’s chaotic and eccentric flatmate. She returned to a lesbian role in the television drama Giving Tongue (1996), as the former teenage girlfriend of a campaigning anti-blood sports Labour MP (played by Clare Holman). “I’ve kissed more women than men on set,” she said, “and I’m heterosexual.” She also appeared in The Young Poisoner’s Handbook (1995), as the sister of the real-life mass poisoner Graham Young, Different For Girls (1996) as an editorial assistant trying to get her transsexual boss sacked, The Revengers’ Comedies as Norma, The Man With Rain In His Shoes (1998) as Alison Hayes, Shark Hunt (1998), Beautiful People as Portia Thornton, Bodywork (1999) as Tiffany Shades and A Loving Act (2001) as Police Detective Jane Thompson. She relaxed by driving, riding, knitting and playing snooker. Charlotte Coleman was unmarried.
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