Trivia

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.

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.

Lived in a house in Hollywood's Coldwater Canyon, which was built by William Randolph Hearst in 1929.

Drew comics and made 8mm movies with his friends as a kid.

Sold the spec script thriller Captivity (2007). This is his fifth spec script thriller in the last five years. Phone Booth (2002) was sold in December 1998 in the mid-six figures. "Cast of Characters" for $350,000 and Cellular (2004) for $750,000 were both sold in 1999. "Man Alive" was sold in August 2002 for a mid-six-figure amount. (June 2003)

His wife, Cynthia Costas Cohen, is a psychotherapist and sculptor.

Fred Williamson was shooting That Man Bolt (1973) in Los Angeles at the same time as Hell Up in Harlem (1973) which was in production in New York, so a double was used for most of the Tommy Gibbs character's New York close-ups. According to Cohen, Williamson did not like the double's physical appearance, remarking that "his butt was too big."

Has said that if he had been allowed to run The Invaders (1967), he would have given David Vincent 1) more of a sense of humor, 2) fewer aliens to fight and made them harder to kill, and 3) more of an on-going team of "Believers" in the second year to help him fight the aliens.

Educated at the City College of New York and New York University.

Older brother of publicist Ronni Chasen.

His date of birth was July 15th 1936, though some sources during his life erroneously reported that he was born in 1941.

Father, with Janelle Webb, of Jill Gatsby and Melissa Inger.

Sold two teleplays to Kraft Mystery Theater (1961) when he was only 22 years old.

He was three-quarters Russian Jewish and one quarter Irish Catholic descent. Although his family practiced Judaism while he was growing up, he was an agnostic as an adult.

His younger sister, Ronni Chasen, was a well-known Hollywood publicist.

Was the creator of the 1967 TV series Coronet Blue (1967), which was an offshoot of his work on the TV series The Defenders (1961). Cohen wrote in his autobiography, "The Radical Allegories of an Independent Filmmaker," why the mystery behind the short-lived series' title/catch-phrase was never solved, and what it actually meant. "When the Brodkin Organization took over the series, they wanted to turn it into an anthology...so they played down the amnesia aspect until there was nothing about it at all in the show. It was just Frank Converse wandering from one story to the next with no connective format at all. Anyway, the show ended after seventeen weeks and nobody found out what 'coronet blue' meant. The actual secret is that Converse was not really an American at all. He was a Russian who had been trained to appear like an American and was sent to the US as a spy. He belonged to a spy unit called Coronet Blue. He decided to defect, so the Russians tried to kill him before he could give away the identities of the other Soviet agents. And nobody can really identify him because he doesn't exist as an American. Coronet Blue was actually an outgrowth of the episode called 'The Traitor' of 'The Defenders.'"

Worked as a page at NBC.