Sam Cohn

Samuel Charles Cohn (May 11, 1929 – May 6, 2009) was an American talent agent at International Creative Management, a firm he helped create, in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.

Cohn has been described as one of the most powerful agents in the 1970s and 1980s,

Early life Cohn was born to a Jewish family in Altoona, Pennsylvania. His father, grandfather and uncle operated a company called Independent Oil Company of Pennsylvania that marketed refined petroleum products, and was later sold to Standard Oil of New York.

Cohn attended the Culver Military Academy in Indiana, described Cohn's career and personality in detail. Cohn was known for lunching at New York's Russian Tea Room almost every day, his habit of eating paper, which is unusual among major motion picture agents. Cohn was also famously difficult to reach on the phone. His obituaries in the two leading entertainment industry trade newspapers both mentioned that he was "the most difficult man in the business to get on the phone"; and, in his New Yorker profile, Singer repeated an industry joke that Cohn's tombstone would read, "Here lies Sam Cohn. He'll get back to you."

The character Arnold Moss, a paper-eating talent agent based on Cohn, was created by Nora Ephron and portrayed by Dan Aykroyd in Ephron's 1992 film This Is My Life.

Cohn's client list and influence waned in later years; The Variety article reporting his retirement noted: "Hanging onto his trademark ways to the very end, Cohn did not return a call from Daily Variety for comment."