(b Lindfield, 25 Sept 1872; d London, 31 Jan 1951). English theatrical producer. He first worked as an actor in America, then became a manager and producer. He brought Houdini to London and was associated with the presentation of boxing, wrestling, rodeo and circus. He twice produced Max Reinhardt’s religious epic, Das Mirakel (1911 and 1932), for which he commissioned a score from Engelbert Humperdinck. Cochran’s true métier was West End revue; whereas Charlot tended to discover talent and make revue stars, Cochran often presented them in a grander style. Noël Coward wrote, composed and starred in Cochran’s This Year of Grace (1928), which Cochran produced at the London Pavilion, where he staged many successful revues. He later moved towards the creation of an English style of musical comedy when the appeal of the revue dwindled.
Cochran frequently interpolated Broadway hits into his shows, and Rodgers and Hart (Evergreen, 1930) and Cole Porter (Nymph Errant, 1933) created scores especially for him. He also produced Coward’s Bitter Sweet (1929) and successfully imported from Broadway Kern’s The Cat and the Fiddle (1932) and Music in the Air (1933), and Porter’s Anything Goes (1935). His shows were essentially glamorous vehicles for star performers, a style epitomized by Alice Delysia, Jessie Matthews, Evelyn Laye, Yvonne Printemps, Gertrude Lawrence and Coward. Towards the end of his life his association with A.P. Herbert and Vivan Ellis produced a trio of English hit musicals: Big Ben (1946), Bless the Bride (1947) and Tough at the Top (1949). He was knighted in 1948, and his career was celebrated in the revue Cockie! (1973).
C.B. Cochran: Secrets of a Showman (London, 1925)
C.B. Cochran: Showman Looks On (London, 1945)
C. Graves: The Cochran Story (London, 1951)
J. Harding: Cochran (London, 1988)
ROBERT HOWIE