Background
Alfred A. Cohn was born on March 26, 1880 in Freeport, Illinois, United States. He was the son of Goldie Jackson Cohn and Isador Cohn, a dealer in cigars and gentlemen's furnishings who had emigrated from Prussia.
public official reporter writer
Alfred A. Cohn was born on March 26, 1880 in Freeport, Illinois, United States. He was the son of Goldie Jackson Cohn and Isador Cohn, a dealer in cigars and gentlemen's furnishings who had emigrated from Prussia.
Alfred Cohn attended local public schools until he was fifteen years old and then went to work for a Chicago newspaper.
In 1909 he moved to California and wrote feature stories for Photoplay magazine about such early movie stars as Henry B. Walthall and Douglas Fairbanks. By 1918 Cohn had started to write for the screen. Eventually he wrote or collaborated on more than 100 film scripts for Universal, Selznick International, Warner Brothers, and Twentieth Century-Fox. These scripts included The Cohens and the Kellys, a comedy series produced by Universal Studios that began in 1926 and starred George Sidney and Charles Murray; The Cat and the Canary (1927), a near-classic detective story (adapted from the stage play by John Willard) that alternated between parody and seriousness; and The Gorilla, a popular horror movie that appeared the same year and showed Cohn's flair for the macabre. He also collaborated on the screenplay Harold Teen, which was based upon the widely read comic strip of the 1920's and 1930's, and wrote the scenarios for The Holy Terror (1931), The Cisco Kid (1931), starring Warner Baxter, and Mystery Ranch (1932). In 1927 Cohn wrote the script for The Jazz Singer, a popular film adapted from Samson Raphaelson's nostalgic and sentimental Broadway play. The movie, which concerned the refusal of a Jewish cantor to tolerate his son's commitment to popular music, had three themes: modern versus traditional values, duty to parents, and desire for self-fulfillment. The film was written purposely to attract a cross section of young and old, parents and children, modernists and traditionalists, and the ambitious and dutiful. Although it was largely silent, Al Jolson, the star of the show, sang and spoke a few words. Cohn's screenplay gave vague directions on the use of Vitaphone, the new audio technique, but he encouraged the director to improvise in the sound sequences. The movie premiered on October 6, 1927, and made film history as the first recognized feature motion picture with synchronized speech, music, and other sound. Richard Watts, Jr. , movie critic for the New York Herald Tribune, described it as "a pleasant enough sentimental orgy"; but other reviewers generally treated it more harshly. In contrast, the public's favorable reaction was overwhelming. Audiences responded to the natural, intimate voice and were more fascinated by the speech than by the singing. The dialogue passages made it the most successful movie of the year. Cohn wrote several books, fiction and nonfiction, and collaborated on two best sellers with Joseph Chisholm: Gun Notches (1931), the life story of a cowboy-soldier, Captain Thomas H. Rynning, and Take the Witness (1934), the biography of Earl Rogers, a celebrated and controversial criminal lawyer, whose court appearances Cohn had observed as an Associated Press reporter. Cohn also wrote a column called "Now and Then" for the Los Angeles Examiner but left this work in March 1938 to concentrate on screenwriting for Twentieth Century-Fox, with whom he was under contract. A prolific writer in many fields, Cohn had a particular talent for creating films that appealed to the public's popular imagination in the era between the two world wars. He was also able to adjust his scripts from the tones and tastes of the prosperous 1920's to suit the more critical and demanding theatergoers in the depression days of the 1930's. Cohn was also active in public affairs. He served as United States collector of customs for the Port of Los Angeles from 1935 to 1939 and was a member of the Board of Public Utilities and Transportation in 1939. Mayor Fletcher Bowron of Los Angeles appointed him to the Board of Police Commissioners on February 9, 1940, and Cohn was credited with initiating several procedural reforms. He served as vice-president of the board in 1944 and resigned as commissioner on August 16, 1946. He died in Los Angeles, California.
At the first Academy Awards banquet on May 16, 1929, Warner Brothers received a special award for the talking picture, which it correctly claimed "has revolutionized the industry, " and Cohn received an honorable mention. He had received an Academy Award nomination for the best adaptation of a story for the screen but lost in the final count to Benjamin Glazer, who wrote the film script for Seventh Heaven. Nevertheless, Cohn was recognized as a leading motion-picture writer and in 1934 served on the governing board of the Screen Writers Guild. He was a pioneer in developing screenwriting techniques not only for the simple, trail-blazing silents but also for the more complex talkies.
In 1935 his wife, of whom little is known, died; they had three children.
