Sir Charles Blake Cochran (25 September 1872 31 January 1951), professionally known as C. B. Cochran or Charles B. Cochran, was an English impresario, known for popularising the genre of revue, hitherto unfamiliar, in Britain. Apart from revue, his major theatrical successes included The Miracle in 1911, noted for its spectacular staging, The Better 'Ole (1917), This Year of Grace (1928), Bitter Sweet (1929), Cavalcade (1931) and Bless the Bride (1947). He also promoted a range of other entertainments, including professional boxing, tennis, wrestling, circus and a zoo. He published four volumes of memoirs about his life and work.
After beginning his career as an actor in the US in 1891, Cochran became a manager and press agent for theatrical and other entertainments. He returned to England in 1899 managing entertainers and eventually was producing theatre, sporting events, variety shows and revues. As a theatrical producer he was responsible for West End and some Broadway productions of shows by Noël Coward, Cole Porter, Vivian Ellis and Rogers and Hart as well as a wide range of plays by writers including Henrik Ibsen, James Barrie, Sean O'Casey, A. P. Herbert and Eugene O'Neill.
Cochran was a leading impresario of his generation. Some of his productions were unsustainably lavish and expensive, leaving him bankrupt twice. Nevertheless, by the end of his career he had been honoured with a knighthood in Britain and the Legion of Honour in France.
Life and career
Early years Cochran was born on 25 September 1872 in Brighton, Sussex, the fourth of the nine children of James Elphinstone Cochran, a tea and cigar importer, and his wife, Matilda Arnold née Walton, the daughter of a merchant navy officer. In December 1879, at the age of seven, the boy saw the pantomime Sinbad the Sailor at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, starring Arthur Roberts.Cochran (1845), p. 128 This experience inspired a lifelong passion for the theatre. At Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School between 1883 and 1888 he shared a study with Aubrey Beardsley;Ellis, Vivian. "Cochran, Sir Charles Blake (1872–1951)", Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 1971. they shared an enthusiasm for acting and appeared at the Brighton Pavilion in a play written by Beardsley.Harding, James. "Cochran, Sir Charles Blake (1872–1951)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2005. With Beardsley, Cochran saw a West End production of As You Like It in July 1890 given by Augustin Daly's visiting Broadway company, led by John Drew and Ada Rehan.Cochran (1845), p. 164 Cochran determined to pursue a stage career in New York. After briefly working as a clerk in Brighton, he absconded with some of his employer's money and sailed to the US in 1891.Heppner, pp. 17–18
He secured engagements in small roles in adaptations of Around the World in Eighty Days and Rip Van Winkle, but was otherwise so unsuccessful that he was forced to take what work he could get, ranging from selling fountain-pens at the Chicago World's Fair to serving as assistant to the Anglican chaplain at New York harbour.Heppner, pp. 26 and 30 Eventually, he was employed by the actor-manager Richard Mansfield, who thought he would never be a good actor (and told him so) but foresaw a managerial career for him, and appointed him as his private secretary at a salary ten dollars higher than he had enjoyed as an actor.Graves, p. 14; and Heppner, p. 32 After a disagreement with Mansfield, Cochran set up an acting school in New York in partnership with the actor E. J. Henley (brother of the poet W. E. Henley) and began producing serious drama in 1897, with Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman, at Hoyt's Theatre in New York with Henley in the title role. Later in that year Cochran returned to London, working as a journalist. Seeing a production of Cyrano de Bergerac in Paris, with Benoît-Constant Coquelin in the title role,Fouquier, Henry. "Les Théâtres", Le Figaro, 29 December 1897, p. 4 he was convinced that Mansfield should play the part in New York. Cochran's biographer Vivian Ellis comments that this was one of the earliest instances of Cochran's ability to star an actor in the right vehicle. He was reconciled with Mansfield and returned to the US as his manager, organising his nationwide tour of Cyrano de Bergerac."Sir Charles Cochran", The Times, 1 February 1951, p. 8
First London productions Cochran returned to London in 1899 and set up business in Chancery Lane as a theatrical agent. Gradually he gained success in management, representing Mistinguett, Ethel Levey, Harry Houdini, Odette Dulac and the wrestler George Hackenschmidt, the last of whom he matched at Olympia in 1904 against Ahmed Madrali, the "Terrible Turk".Kane, p. 42 His first theatrical venture in London production, a farce called Sporting Simpson at the Royalty Theatre in 1902, was a failure.Graves, p. 31 His second attempt, at the same theatre, Lyre and Lancet – an adaptation by F. Anstey and Kinsey Peile of the former's articles in Punch"Royalty Theatre", The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 15 November 1902, p. 396 – also failed and in 1903 he was declared bankrupt. Hackenschmidt came to his rescue, paying off his debts for him.Heppner, p. 55 In 1905 Cochran married Evelyn Alice Dade, the daughter of a captain in the merchant navy. The marriage was lifelong and devoted, despite occasional infidelities on Cochran's part;Heppner, p. 138 they had no children.
Between 1903 and the First World War Cochran restored his finances with other ventures, from roller-skating to circuses at Earl's Court and Olympia. His greatest success of those years was Max Reinhardt's spectacular production of Karl Vollmöller's wordless play The Miracle. The original idea came from Cochran, who suggested to Reinhardt that he should stage a mystery play set in the Middle Ages, and that Olympia should be converted to look like a cathedral for the purpose. Reinhardt gave him a letter of introduction to Vollmöller who prepared a scenario. Cochran accepted it and worked in close collaboration with Reinhardt, the designer Ernst Stern and the composer Engelbert Humperdinck.Cochran (1845), p. 288 The play opened at Olympia on 23 December 1911. Initially, box-office takings were disappointing, but Hamilton Fyfe of The Daily Mail wrote of his astonishment "that so wonderful a spectacle as The Miracle" was drawing so few people,Graves, p. 43 after which the Mail's proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, had his other papers extolling the play, and it became a success. The biographer Samuel Heppner writes that the piece then played to full houses, "turning away disappointed members of the public in their thousands".Heppner, p. 68 Ellis comments that subsequently "the eulogies Cochran received from the Northcliffe press were offset by his more critical reception by other popular newspapers".
The next attraction Cochran presented at Olympia was Carl Hagenbeck's "Wonder Zoo and Big Circus" in 1913.Graves, pp. 44–46 A London newspaper reported in January 1914 that the show "has broken all records for Olympia. Gigantic as the place is, it is difficult to find room for all who wish to see what a first-class circus is really like"."The Olympia Circus", Shoreditch Observer, 10 January 1914, p. 2
Revue
In May 1914 Cochran took a lease of the Ambassadors, one of the West End's smaller theatres, with a capacity of 490 seats.Parker, p. 1164–1165 The outbreak of war brought what The Times described as "something like a theatrical 'boom' as the prevailing mood, of troops and public alike, called for gaiety, lightness, and colour to offset the grim business in hand". Cochran turned to the genre of revue, hitherto little seen in Britain, and had a conspicuous box-office success in October 1914 with what the biographer James Ross Moore calls a "bare-bones" production, Odds and Ends.Moore, James Ross. Charlot, (Eugene) André Maurice (1882–1956), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2011. This show, with words by Harry Grattan and music by Edward Jones, starred Cochran's discovery Alice Delysia. Her song "We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go", encouraging young men to join the army, was a particular hit.Short and Compton-Rickett, p. 256 The revue dispensed with spectacular décor and a large cast in favour of a more intimate style with modest staging – one critic commented that Cochran had spared no economy in mounting the show. At the first night the revue was part of a triple bill, but the other two parts were soon dropped, and Odds and Ends was expanded to a full evening, with only a brief curtain raiser."Dramatis Personae", The Observer, 27 December 1914, p. 4 The revue appealed to the public and the show ran for more than 500 performances.Mander and Mitchenson (1971), p. 29 Another musical comedy was Houp La! (1916), which Cochran produced at London's new St Martin's Theatre, where he had signed a 21-year lease, starring Gertie Millar.Cochran (1825), pp. 224–226; and Wearing, p. 622"A Cosy New Theatre", The Times, 24 November 1916, p. 11
After several more revues and musical comedies, Cochran produced two sociological plays by Eugène Brieux – Damaged Goods () and The Three Daughters of M. Dupont (). In 1917, at the Oxford Music Hall, London, he put on Bruce Bairnsfather's comedy The Better 'Ole, which ran for 817 performances. At the Pavilion in 1918 he produced the revue As You Were, composed by Herman Darewski and Edouard Mathe, with words by Arthur Wimperis, and starring Delysia, which ran for a year."As You Were", The Play Pictorial, vol. 33, no. 199, p. 48 (8 March 1918) Cochran was now, according to The Times "a power in the entertainment world". In 1919 he took control of the Garrick and Aldwych theatres and the Holborn Stadium, where he promoted many high-profile boxing matches, including Bombardier Billy Wells versus Joe Beckett and Beckett versus Georges Carpentier. Cochran later wrote:
Bankruptcy, recovery and Coward
In the first years of the next decade Cochran presented a string of revues and a wide range of other theatrical productions, including Sarah Bernhardt's last London season, at the Prince's Theatre (1921), a season by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Prince's (1921), the Chauve-Souris ballet company at the Pavilion (1921), and a 1923 season of Eleonora Duse at matinées and Sacha Guitry in the evenings at the New Oxford. The revues included London, Paris and New York (1920), with music by Herman Darewski; Fun of the Fayre (1921); The League of Notions (1921); Mayfair and Montmartre (1922); and Dover Street to Dixie (1923), featuring the American singer Florence Mills. The later shows were lavishly and expensively mounted: expenditure outran receipts. Hoping to recoup his losses Cochran put on a season of American plays in 1923, including Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and The Hairy Ape, which did not repeat in the West End the success they had enjoyed in the US, and a spectacular rodeo at Wembley failed to attract the crowds. In September 1924 Cochran was bankrupt for the second time."Mr C. B. Cochran Bankrupt", London Daily Chronicle, 12 September 1924, p. 5