1. Samuel Charles Cohn was an American talent agent at International Creative Management, a firm he helped create, in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
14 Facts About Sam Cohn
1. 2.
Sam Cohn was born to a Jewish family in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
3.
Sam Cohn attended the Culver Military Academy in Indiana, and earned a bachelor's degree in English and German literature from Princeton University.
4.
Sam Cohn enrolled in Yale Law School, but put his legal studies on hold to join the Army, where he served for two years.
5.
Sam Cohn was stationed in Japan at the end of the Korean War and became a private first class.
6.
Sam Cohn worked his way up through the television industry with stints as a television producer, as a lawyer at CBS, and as a lawyer and business executive at Goodson-Todman, producer of game shows including The Price Is Right.
7.
Sam Cohn was a lawyer for a small agency, General Artists Corporation, which, through a series of acquisitions and mergers, evolved first into a larger agency called Creative Management Associates, and then, in 1974, into ICM.
8.
Sam Cohn was known for lunching at New York's Russian Tea Room almost every day, his habit of eating paper, and his strong preference for New York over Los Angeles, which is unusual among major motion picture agents.
9.
The character Arnold Moss, a paper-eating talent agent based on Sam Cohn, was created by Nora Ephron and portrayed by Dan Aykroyd in Ephron's 1992 film This Is My Life.
10.
Sam Cohn remained a member of ICM's board of directors until 2005 and continued to work at ICM until retiring in early 2009.
11.
Sam Cohn died in May 2009 in Manhattan after a short illness; he was 79.
12.
Sam Cohn was married three times, including to Jane Gelfman at the time of his death.
13.
Sam Cohn had a daughter, Marya, a son, Peter, and four grandchildren.
14.
Sam Cohn dated actress and client Dianne Wiest for three years in the mid-1980s.