- Born
- Died
- Birth nameLawrence G. Cohen
- Height5′ 10½″ (1.79 m)
- Larry Cohen was born July 15, 1936, in New York, New York, and spent time in Kingston, a small town north of New York City. At a young age, his family moved to the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and he eventually majored in film at the historic City College of New York, from which he graduated in 1963. An independent maverick who got his start in studio-based television, he is best known for inventive low-budget horror films that combine scathing social commentary with the requisite scares and occasional laughs. He was also a major player in the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s. Later in his career, he became a sought-after screenplay writer. Although not very prolific in his screen writing, these works still combine provocative social commentary--but with more conventional storytelling. Sadly, Cohen died of cancer on March 23, 2019.- IMDb Mini Biography By: MuzikJunky
- SpousesCynthia Costas(1994 - March 24, 2019) (his death)Janelle Webb(June 10, 1964 - January 1, 1987) (divorced, 5 children)
- Children
- RelativesRonni Chasen(Sibling)
- A scene shot at his house in Beverly Hills
- Does not use a computer or typewriter to write. Dictates his scripts into a hand-held tape recorder.
- Not often allowed to run the TV series that he created. He was removed from creative control of Branded (1965) after one year and was never involved with The Invaders (1967) once he had turned over his outline for the first year.
- Lived in a house in Hollywood's Coldwater Canyon, which was built by William Randolph Hearst in 1929.
- Directed Hell Up in Harlem (1973) and It's Alive (1974) simultaneously, working on "It's Alive!" from Monday to Friday and "Hell Up in Harlem" at the weekends.
- Drew comics and made 8mm movies with his friends as a kid.
- Life has been good to me. I keep making pictures. Every year I make something. As long as I keep working, I have nothing to complain about. And the films I've made have all had some point to them. Otherwise, I wouldn't have felt they were worth doing. You have to have some direction in which you're headed and a destination which you have to arrive at by the end of the film, so that you feel it was a satisfactory trip. Some kind of personal statement has to be made.
- Sometimes the scenes that really make a movie work are the little scenes that have nothing to do with advancing the action, but just add a little something.
- [on how he came up with the idea of the aliens' signature extended pinky finger on his series The Invaders (1967)] The extended pinky used to be a symbol of effeminacy . . . you know, the effete [person] holding a glass of champagne with the pinky extended? When this show was done back in the '60s, the homosexual community was kind of a submerged, invisible community. People were living secret lives. I thought, here are these aliens living amongst society, keeping their true identities secret, their true selves secret, and this is funny because the pinky kind of symbolizes homosexuality in some way, and nobody will get the gag, but I'll put it in there anyway.
- Some kids were great playing baseball; other kids were great at playing the piano; some kids were terrific at math. Writing was just something that came naturally.
- I want the picture to be about something -- not just action and violence.
- Cellular (2004) - $750,000
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content