Samuel J. Briskin(1896-1968)
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Bespeckled Sam Briskin was a key executive in CBC (Cohn-Brandt-Cohn)
Film Sales. CBC's financial operations were ran out of New York by
Jack Cohn and Joe Brandt, with
Harry Cohn soon moving west to
Hollywood to secure production facilities and produce films. In the
early years CBC steadfastly refused to buy a studio, preferring to
lease space and rent equipment at the old Balshofer Studios on
Hollywood Boulevard and at the Independent Studios on Sunset and
Gower -- which was known as Poverty Row or Gower Gulch, which did
nothing for the firm's reputation (Gower was populated by fly-by-night
film companies such as Educational Pictures, a notoriously seedy studio
where careers went to die). CBC's earliest releases utilized excess
unexposed film stock purchased from other studios. Initially hired as
an underpaid auditor, Sam quickly rose within the company's Hollywood
ranks thanks to his ability to tactfully negotiate CBC's contracts;
tact not being a gift that his tight-fisted boss
Harry Cohn possessed. CBC's
productions, while profitable, met with derision in the industry -- the
company was nicknamed "Corned Beef and Cabbage" Productions, a tag that
enraged Harry Cohn. And an enraged Harry Cohn was a monster. By the
time the company's name changed to the loftier-sounding Columbia
Pictures Corporation on January 10, 1924, Sam was Harry's
second-in-command. Sam helped guide Harry through several important
business decisions that would pay huge dividends over the next three
decades: he backed the company's decision to reject theater ownership,
supported Cohn's concept (out of sheer cheapness, if nothing else) of
hiring talent, with the notable exceptions of director
Frank Capra,
Peter Lorre (who was largely loaned
out), and, The Three Stooges comedy
team (which came inexpensively enough to justify) on a per-picture
basis -- whenever Columbia tended to use big stars, they were usually
the result of other studios who used the poverty row studio as a lesson
in humility. Both Warner Brothers and MGM routinely loaned out stars to
the studio whenever it was felt they'd become too demanding or picky
about scripts. Briskin negotiated the contracts and Cohn would
invariably place them in Capra's films, usually to great success
throughout the 1930's. Capra's
It Happened One Night (1934)
was the single most important production in the studio's history; the
relatively low budgeted film starred
Claudette Colbert and MGM's
Clark Gable, both of whom bristled at
working anywhere near Gower Gulch. The film earned lowly Columbia its
first Best Picture Oscar and awards for its stars, director and
screenplay adaption, propelling it into the ranks of the major studios.
Once his company attained major-studio status, Cohn was forced to pay
higher salaries to A-list stars, which often caused him fits. Columbia
only began cultivating its own stars on contract late in the decade,
and ironically, it usually took a contractee being loaned out to
another studio to prove to him he had a valuable asset on his hands.
Although a man of remarkable business instincts, Harry Cohn was
undoubtedly the most hated of all the major studio executives due to
his innumerable character flaws: he was explosive, uneducated,
extremely crude and would cuss out anyone at the slightest perceived
fault (imagine say, a shorter meaner Wallace Beery, only vastly more
influential). But it was also true that out of these faults, Cohn
recognized that he needed Sam's expertise -- the two men often fought
(Cohn fought with everyone). With Columbia's rise within the industry,
Sam's reputation grew as moderating force to Cohn's near-impossible
nature. In the 1940's he was placed in charge of the studio's
B-pictures, an important part of the studio's remarkable financial
success and one that it would never abandon during Cohn's reign. Stars
such as 'Glenn Ford',
William Holden and
Rita Hayworth were cultivated and the
studio enjoyed its first real blockbuster with
The Jolson Story (1946), which
grossed a then-whopping $8 million during its initial release. The
Cohn-Briskin team wisely embraced television (with the exception of
Paramount, this decision met with loud derision elsewhere in Hollywood)
in the early 1950's, creating the Screen Gems subsidiary (headed by
Harry's nephew Ralph) and weathered the turmoil of the decade in
relatively good shape, bringing newcomers
Judy Holliday and
Jack Lemmon on board as contract
stars. Harry Cohn's death of a heart attack in 1958 was the end of an
era at the studio and Sam was promoted by the board of directors as
head of production. He led Columbia through the even more turbulent
early 1960's, scoring big hits with _The Guns of Navarone (1961)_ and
'David Lean''s
Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
Meanwhile Screen Gems became a dominant force in television production,
most notably with the long-running hit CBS series
The Beverly Hillbillies (1962)
and its numerous rural comedy spin-offs. Sam Briskin died in 1968,
having successfully transitioned the company away from Cohn's
iron-fisted dictatorial rule.