by Stephen Vagg
In March 1971, Bryan Forbes resigned as head of production of EMI Films. Nat Cohen [pictured far left] had been making movies for EMI through his own unit, Anglo-EMI, so it was a natural progression for EMI’s grand honcho, Bernard Delfont, to appoint Cohen to Forbes’ job (although we have read that James Carreras of Hammer Films fame was hoping for the gig). No doubt, there were some within EMI who felt that the company might be better off dispensing with filmmaking altogether – but there had been some commercial successes (particularly The Railway Children, On the Buses, Up Pompeii and Percy), so Delfont decided to keep going.
This was fortunate for the British film industry of the 1970s. By this stage, the Rank Organisation had cut back on movie production, American film studios had withdrawn almost entirely from financing local pictures, and the once-mighty British Lion (former home of Sir Alex Korda) was mired in financial and management difficulties. This essentially made EMI the most reliable source of film finance in the country. A 1973 article estimated Nat Cohen was responsible for overseeing about 70% of films produced in the UK. He was, in essence, the most powerful person in the British film industry… a position he would keep until 1976.
So – what did the most powerful person in the British film industry actually make?
Well, films released by EMI in 1972 included the following:
– adaptations of TV sitcoms (Steptoe and Son, Nearest and Dearest, That’s Your Funeral);
– sequels to adaptations of sitcoms (Up the Chastity Belt, Up the Front, Mutiny on the Buses);
– adaptations of TV drama (Henry VIII and his Six Wives);
– an internationally-focused crime thriller based on an Alistair Maclean novel from the team that made Villain (Fear is the Key);
– adaptation of an Agatha Christie thriller from the team of Launder and Gilliat (Endless Night);
– star vehicles for stage comics (Our Miss Fred with Danny La Rue);
– Hammer thrillers (Fear in the Night, Straight on Til Morning, Demons of the Mind);
– a classy historical biopic full of “names” (Lady Caroline Lamb, written and directed by Robert Bolt for his then-wife Sarah Miles);
– some documentaries, a genre that had proved lucrative with The Body (I am Nureyev, Weekend of Champions);
– social realism with sex, featuring a reunion of the star and producer of Poor Cow (Made).
This wasn’t a bad slate. Understandably conservative (low budget comedies, crime) with a few “rolls of the artistic dice” like Made and Lady Caroline Lamb. The thrillers were a little on the disappointing side for their cost but had long lives; Endless Night could have been something really special with better direction, and Fear is the Key has an all-time great car chase.
Lady Caroline Lamb came to be regarded as a failure because it didn’t do business in the US, where no one really knows who Lady Caroline Lamb was, but it performed well in Britain. Made doesn’t quite work, despite being from really talented people (Joseph Janni, John Mackenzie, Howard Barker, Carol White, Roy Harper) and stuffed with interesting ideas… it was sort of imitation Ken Loach, but is absolutely worth watching.
The big smash was Steptoe and Son, which was a hugely successful low cost blockbuster.
EMI’s releases for 1973 consisted of a mix similar to the previous year. There were:
– star vehicles for established comics (The House in Nightmare Park with Frankie Howerd, The Best Pair of Legs in the Business with Reg Varney);
– adaptations of TV sitcoms (Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width, Holiday on the Buses, Steptoe and Son Rides Again, Love Thy Neighbour) and dramas (Man at the Top);
– a thriller based on a Michel Moorcock novel (The Final Programme);
– a drama about a troubled child from the director of The Railway Children (Baxter!);
– a social realist drama with sex about an aspiring musician in the 1950s (That’ll Be the Day);
– some short films from a new director Alan Parker (Our Cissy, Footsteps).
That’s not a bad slate either, even if the well was starting to run dry on the comedies. The Final Programme didn’t quite work but is full of interesting things. The same could be said for Baxter! (which took a while to be released – we think that EMI cinemas weren’t that keen to show it).
The real success story for Cohen was That’ll Be the Day, which he backed despite having a relatively little known producer (David Puttnam), writer (Ray Connolly), director (Claude Whatham) and lead (David Essex)… It wasn’t an obvious slam dunk – Puttnam had some credits, but they included only a mild success (Melody) and a disaster (The Pied Piper), the story was downbeat, and the lead was not a big name at the time (David Essex). But Cohen could recognise Puttnam’s talent, not to mention the opportunities for a killer soundtrack – always a factor at a company like EMI – and the fact that the script had sex in it, thus it might be another A Kind of Loving or Poor Cow. This hadn’t worked out with Made but did for That’ll be the Day which was a big hit.
In 1973, EMI Films was given a Queens Industry Award and a newspaper described the company as “an oasis in the cultural desert of British film industry.” In hindsight, it’s a shame that Cohen didn’t make a few horror co-productions with AIP during this period, like he had back in the day. This might have been a decree from Bernard Delfont, who announced in 1973 that “shock value pictures do find a quick profit but that is simply not our policy.” Cohen agreed that “We are not interested in skin flicks or films of extreme violence.” (So, no Confessions of a Window Cleaner style movies from EMI.) He added that “A good film nowadays will make more money than it ever could. But when a film flops, it flops disastrously.”
Cohen’s 1974 slate for EMI Films included the following:
– adaptations of beloved books that could have come from the Bryan Forbes regime (Swallows and Amazons, All Creatures Great and Small);
– two American orientated films: a true life family adventure story about an around the world sailor, produced by Gregory Peck (The Dove) and a spy spoof with Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland (S*P*Y*S*);
– a Cliff Richard musical (Take Me High);
– two sex comedy sequels (Alfie Darling, Percy’s Progress);
– a music drama sequel to That’ll Be the Day (Stardust);
– a Sam Peckinpah action film (The Killer Elite);
– an Agatha Christie adaptation (Murder on the Orient Express);
– sitcom adaptations (Man About the House);
– a clip show of a comedy series (The Best of Benny Hill).
That is a solid, diversified slate. The Alfie sequel was a bad idea, and the film is terrible (from Cohen’s old 1950s favourite Ken Hughes) – Alan Price is certainly no Michael Caine. Take Me High, a love letter to hamburgers and the city of Birmingham, was an attempt to repeat the success of Cliff Richards’ early 1960s musicals but done cheaply and weirdly (characters sometimes sing on screen, other times sing in voice over). No one much likes S*P*Y*S* or The Killer Elite, which were basically Hollywood films with some British finance.
The family movies were an absolute delight – Swallows and Amazons, The Dove, and All Creatures Great and Small. The first didn’t get the audience it deserved, the second did poorly in America but very well internationally, and the last was a hit (even if memory of the movie has been supplanted by the subsequent television series – it’s wonderful). All movies have had long lives.
The real blockbuster, however, was Murder on the Orient Express. Making the movie was Cohen’s idea: “I just had a feeling that, considering all the gloom and doom in the country, Agatha Christie would go down well,” he said. It Is likely Cohen realised that EMI needed some bigger movies to bring in bigger profits, particularly a franchise – the most lucrative British films of that decade were franchises (Bond, Pink Panther, Monty Python). An all-star Agatha Christie adaptation might break through. Cohen added, “The problem was to find the right man to bring her book to the screen. She was a ‘difficult’ woman: she had no need of the money and she had hated all previous screen adaptations of her novels. I asked John Brabourne to approach her.”
Braborne was a cultured, well-connected man who got the rights from Christie in part because she admired his film of Tales of Beatrix Potter (the Forbes one – so Forbes played a role in giving Cohen one of his biggest successes). Brabourne did a superb job producing on Orient Express – he wrangled a genuinely impressive cast, Paul Dehn wrote a terrific script, and Sidney Lumet directed well (most films Lumet made outside New York didn’t go so well but this one did). Cohen’s gamble – EMI paid for the whole cost – paid off magnificently. After almost twenty five years of making movies he was the hottest executive in the business.
Cohen did reject an opportunity to finance Monty Python and the Holy Grail – he may have been scared off by the team’s ambition, so different to other big screen versions from comedy groups at the time. However, after the film was made (it was financed mostly by rock musicians) he picked it up for distribution. Michael Palin wrote in his diary “Nat Cohen of EMI now seems to be quite converted to Python and is prepared to give it the full treatment. It shows how fast things are moving — only 48 hours ago we were being told we were lucky to get a cinema like the ABC Bloomsbury at all. Now they are confident in filling 1600 places.”
Palin did later complain that EMI “produced a pusillanimous campaign which rejected nearly all our ideas” but the movie was highly lucrative. (NB: Years later, EMI were going to finance Life of Brian – Palin says this was pushed by Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings, who will be discussed below – but then Bernard Delfont pulled out when he read the script and George Harrison famously stepped in to create history.)
By the mid 1970s, the British industry was staggering to stay on its feet due to declining audiences, rising costs and unsympathetic business conditions. EMI under Cohen demonstrated there was a way to move forward: a combination of low budgeted films aimed at the domestic market and larger budgeted international productions. Cohen announced a slate of projects that embraced these approaches – and which would, in the end, get him fired. Kind of.
The films were:
– two musical biopics, The Nat King Cole Story and The Gracie Fields Story;
– a second Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun;
– Aces High, a version of Journey’s End only set in the Air Force;
– Seven Nights in Japan, a version of Roman Holiday from director Lewis Gilbert;
– sex comedies with Leslie Phillips (Spanish Fly, Not Now Comrade);
– Trick or Treat, a sexual drama from the team that made Stardust;
– adaptations of a hit TV drama (The Sweeney) and sitcom (The Likely Lads);
– a sequel to All Creatures Great and Small (It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet);
– a Hammer horror that tried to go into The Exorcist territory (To the Devil … a Daughter);
– a remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets with Dick Emery;
– a Sam Peckinpah war film (Cross of Iron).
This was a decent slate – musical biopics, a war film, a romance, TV adaptations, a Hammer horror, a sequel, some action. Cohen also signed a deal to distribute Dino de Laurentiis films in England so “Nat Cohen presents” would be slapped on Dino efforts such as King Kong.
But Cohen’s luck deserted him. The biopics were not made, neither was Kind Hearts and Coronets. Aces High flopped – Journey’s End didn’t translate to the sky, at least not in this version with these stars (Simon Ward, Malcolm McDowell, Peter Firth) and this director (Jack Gold); 1938’s Dawn Patrol is far better. No one liked Seven Nights in Japan: Roman Holiday needs gold-plated stars to work and Michael York and Hidemi Aoki were not that. Spanish Fly and the TV adaptations were likely profitable, especially Sweeney! which made so much money it led to Sweeney 2. Cross of Iron became a big hit in Europe, but its production was delayed a few years.
It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet had a better actor to play James Herriott (John Alderton, the great lost British film star of the 1970s) than All Creatures Great and Small, but didn’t have as compelling a story – it started with Herriott already established in Yorkshire and in love, and didn’t add anything much new.
To the Devil … a Daughter was a financial and creative disappointment, which killed off Hammer horror. Michael Carreras complained that Cohen wouldn’t give him the funds to shoot a new ending. Still, like all Hammer horrors, the movie has its fans and has probably proved lucrative over the long term.
Trick or Treat was a disaster – stars Bianca Jagger and Jan Smithers were unhappy with the script and the nudity and refused to do it. Eventually, the film was called off with 400,000 pounds spent. Also damagingly, production on Evil Under the Sun was delayed when scriptwriter Paul Dehn fell ill and died. The film was not made until 1982 – the Orient team instead filmed Death on the Nile, a big success, but it did not come out until 1978. Cohen thus did not have a big success to protect his position.
And this mattered, because by 1976 Delfont had fallen in love with the British Lion management team of Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings. In a way, this was odd because Deeley and Spikings hadn’t been that successful at British Lion – they’d made interesting films (The Wicker Man, The Man Who Fell to Earth) but not blockbusters, although Deely had a strong track record as a producer (Robbery, The Italian Job). What sold Delfont on them was that they (a) were much younger than Cohen and (b) had a very clear vision of how EMI should move forward – make films aimed at the intentional market, but only invest half the budget, raising the rest from Hollywood. Delfont was receptive and in May 1976, Deeley and Spiking joined EMI. “It does not change my position in the slightest,” insisted Cohen. “I shall continue to be chairman and chief executive of the EMI film production side.”
But that didn’t happen – Cohen was kicked upstairs to become executive chairman, resigning from this position in October 1977. The last films to have his names on them were sequels (Sweeney 2, Death on the Nile) and a sitcom adaptation (Are You Being Served?) He was kept on at EMI as a consultant – as Cohen described it, “not in charge, yet not excluded from policy-making; not often consulted and rarely finding people available when I wanted to consult them. A delicate situation.” (Did Bernard Delfont get sick of seeing Cohen splash his name on every EMI film – “Nat Cohen Presents” became ubiquitous, even when EMI were just acting as a distributor?)
Cohen watched on as EMI originally employed the Deeley-Spikings system to great effect, investing in some international co-productions (Convoy, The Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Nickelodeon, The Deer Hunter, The Deep) along with more parochial movies (Death on the Nile, Warlords of Atlantis, The Sweeney 2).
For all our admiration of Nat Cohen, we actually think the Deeley/Spikings approach was smart and suited EMI perfectly. It was international, resulted in classy films, shared risk with American majors, but still allowed for local, heavily British films to be made.
But then Bernard Delfont completely stuffed it up. Not only did he refuse to invest in Life of Brian, he was persuaded by his brother, Lew Grade, to distribute EMI movies in America in association with Grade’s own company, IFC – they set up their own American-based company, Associated Film Distribution (AFD). This was an utterly foolish move, that had been tried in the past by British companies (eg. the Rank organisation) and always failed.
Instead of being partners with Americans, they became direct competitors, and became reliant on their own skillset. Deeley quit EMI and Spikings then oversaw a raft of productions that wrecked EMI as a potent studio force, notably Can’t Stop the Music, The Jazz Singer and Honky Tony Freeway. Even Agatha Christie failed them with The Mirror Crack’d (it’s got to be said, some of EMI’s movies were very good, but we are talking about them as commercial propositions).
A great “what if” of the British film industry… what if EMI had stuck by the Deeley/Spikings plan?
It would have had a good chance of success. It was the most realistic way for a British studio to operate, ensuring greater access to capital and international distribution – this was the technique used by Nat Cohen in the 1950s with all those AIP co-producers, and by Hammer Films at their peak. Delfont deserves a great deal of praise for keeping British filmmaking alive in the 1970s and a great deal of criticism for going into partnership with his brother. EMI could have become a real force.
Another “what if” – what if EMI had not brought in Spikings and Deeley and kept Cohen in charge?
That’s an interesting one. To operate an international co-production system, you need to have what Cohen had with Stuart Levy and Michael Deeley had with Barry Spikings – someone to look after the store in London while the other person was on the road developing relationships. Cohen’s international links were never as good after Levy’s death.
Still, Cohen would have had the Agatha Christie franchise (he said he was only interested in the Poirot movies and criticised the decision by EMI to make The Mirror Crack’d which flopped). Would he have persuaded Delfont to make Life of Brian? Would Cohen’s presence at EMI encourage David Puttnam to make his hit ‘80s films there (Chariots of Fire)? What about Lewis Gilbert (Educating Rita)? Cohen never would have rolled the dice on something like The Deer Hunter – but he wouldn’t have done a Honky Tonk Freeway either.
We can understand why Bernard Delfont let Deeley and Spikings take over from Cohen. But he should have used Cohen more once Deeley left. You know who definitely could have used Cohen? IFC and The Rank Organisation, who both went into movie making in a big way in the late 1970s, with initially encouraging but ultimately disastrous results. Cohen’s stewardship would have been invaluable at either company.
This might explain why Bernard Delfont kept Cohen on at EMI as a consultant – so he wouldn’t go to competitors. Thus, Cohen remained at EMI when Deeley quit, and Spikings was replaced by Verity Lambert.
Cohen earned one more film credit at EMI prior to his death: executive producer on the 1986 comedy Clockwise. The script came to him via Cohen’s old theatre contact at New Arts, Michael Codron. A bright comedy, starring John Cleese, it was one of the highlights of Verity Lambert’s regime (which also included A Passage to India and Dreamchild). The film did well in Britain but not the US – and thus had great influence on Cleese’s next film, A Fish Called Wanda, because the star determined it would not be so parochial. Still, it was a classy final credit for Nat Cohen.
Cohen eventually got the boot from EMI when Cannon Films took over the company in 1986. He died of a heart attack in February 1988, and David Puttnam read the service at his funeral. There were plenty of obituaries, most mentioning his ownership of Kilmore, the horse that won the 1962 Grand National, but none covered his career in great depth. There were no knighthoods or other honours.
Nat Cohen’s achievements were so significant, and his career was so interesting, it is remarkable that he has been treated with such critical disdain until recent years. Work by authors such as Laura Maybe and Paul Moody have done much to correct this. And in fairness, Alexander Walker gave Cohen a good run in his seminal histories of the British film industry, Hollywood England and National Heroes.
However, we are surprised at the degree to which Cohen was attacked by those who worked with him, such as Bryan Forbes, Peter Rogers, Michael Powell, Vernon Sewell, John Boorman, Frederic Raphael, and Alan Parker. (Michael Winner, ever the maverick, spoke well of Cohen, as did producers like Sandy Lieberson and Puttnam.) This was due for a number of reasons: Sometimes people used Cohen as a figure to blame for their own failures (eg Forbes, Powell) – financiers are useful for this in film historiography.
Furthermore, Cohen was not a filmmaker – he was a financier, and dealmaker, and terrific at spotting talent. He wasn’t good on script, or rushes, or placating little darlings having a bad day. Filmmakers rarely saw Cohen in his element, making a deal, raising money, standing up to censors, lobbying government. Also, we do think that anti-Semitism was a factor here: not only was Cohen a bit “flash”, and (gasp) owned racecourses, he was a tremendous magnet for Jewish filmmakers in Britain – those he worked with included Stuart Levy, John Schlesinger, Norman Hudis, Joseph Janni. That’s an area definitely worth further study as are other aspects of Cohen’s career – the Pete Rogers comedies, for instance.
The two big mistakes that Nat Cohen made:
– getting rid of Pete Rogers and the Carry On series (a guaranteed money spinner until the mid ‘70s, and Rogers was perhaps the most frugal producer in British film history); and
– not having a close partner after Levy’s death who could have kept relationships going in the US (or looked after the store in London while Cohen travelled).
Still, that’s not too bad, and overall, Nat Cohen had an incredibly successful run. It’s important to note that when Cohen was (effectively) sacked from EMI, the company’s filmmaking arm was still gong strong. He never drove his studio into the ground (or receivership) the way, say, Alex Korda did with British Lion, Michael Balcon did with Ealing and Bryanston, Sydney Box did with Gainsborough, Herbert Wilcox did with himself, John Davis did with Rank (in films), and Michel Carreras did with Hammer. He’s one of a handful of British studio execs who left on a high.
Nat Cohen was truly one of the key figures of twentieth century British filmmaking. He helped make movie stars of Tommy Steele, Julie Christie, David Essex, Susan George, Frankie Howerd and Alan Bates; he financed the debut features of Ken Loach, Daniel Angel, John Schlesinger, John Boorman, and Michael Winner, the debut shorts of Alan Parker, and the key early movies of David Puttnam, Robert Towne, Ken Hughes, Clive Donner, Frederic Raphael, and Michael Apted; he saved the career of Joseph Losey; he helped revolutionise British comedy (via the Carry On movies and sitcom adaptations) and musicals (with teen rock); he made iconic crime films (Villain, Murder on the Orient Express), horror (Horror of the Black Museum, Tomb of Ligeia, Peeping Tom), documentaries (The Body) and social realist masterpieces (Family Life, Poor Cow, A Kind of Loving). The way he was dismissed by figures (such as this piece) is disgraceful and it prompted this series. We are not saying that Cohen wasn’t sleazy, or shifty, or fond of a buck; he certainly made his fair share of crap and plenty of mistakes. But we are also saying that he didn’t deserve the bitchy swipes that he’s received over the years. Nat Cohen was, in his own way, a giant.
