Biography

According to film historian Scott MacQueen, Kohner was engaged in the late 1920s to Mary Philbin, star of The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Man Who Laughs (1928). She broke off the engagement at the request of her parents, as she was Irish Catholic and Kohner was a Czech Jew. While he went on to have a successful marriage and career as a Hollywood agent, she soon was through in pictures. Sadly, she never married and spent much of her life taking care of her aging parents, living with them in a house that she had purchased with her film earnings. After Kohner died in 1988, workers cleaning out his office at his agency found Mary's love letters close at hand in his desk drawer--after 60 years.

Children: Susan Kohner and Pancho Kohner.

The Paul Kohner Agency represented many top-flight Hollywood stars and filmmakers, from Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman to John Huston (for 40 years) and Billy Wilder.

Provided financial and immigration aid to emigre artists during World War II through organising the European Relief Fund.

Started as a journalist, working for his father's Prague newspaper. He came to Hollywood at the instigation of Universal boss Carl Laemmle, whom he had previously interviewed. Initially hired as a publicity man, he rose to head Universal's European department (based in Berlin) by the late 1920s. He returned to the US in the mid-'30s as a producer, before starting up his agency in 1938.