Arthur Cohn (right) with actor William Hurt Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Arthur Cohn, the stubborn independent producer who won three feature documentary Oscars and saw three other films that he guided collect Academy Awards for best foreign-language film, died Friday in Jerusalem, his family announced. He was 98. A native of Switzerland, Cohn received Oscars for his work on 1961's Le ciel et la boue (shared with René Lafuite), a documentary about a perilous expedition in what was then known as Dutch New Guinea; 1990's American Dream (shared with director Barbara Kopple), about a workers' strike at a Hormel meat-packing plant in Minnesota; and 1999's One Day in September (shared with director Kevin Macdonald), about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics. From 1967-73, he collaborated with master Italian filmmaker Vittorio De Sica on six films, including The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970). That drama, which centered on a Jewish family in fascist Italy, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and - after Cohn convinced De Sica to tweak the ending - the Academy Award for foreign language film. The shrewd Cohn discovered director Jean-Jacques Annaud and produced his first film, Black and White in Color (1976), a bleak comedy about a battle between French and German colonialists, and then worked with another French freshman helmer, Richard Dembo, on the psychological chess thriller Dangerous Moves (1984). Those films captured the foreign language Oscar as well. "I always like to work with new directors - maybe because I have an easier time in having a say in the film," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. "I absolutely insist on having the final cut, in which I show my creativity." Cohn also partnered with Brazilian director Walter Salles on the Oscar foreign-language nominee Central Station (1998) and Behind the Sun (2001), and he co-produced the French box office hit The Chorus (2004), another foreign-language nominee. More recently, Cohn worked on The Etruscan Smile (2018), starring Brian Cox as an ailing Scotsman who reunites with his estranged son (JJ Field). Related Stories Related Story 'The Etruscan Smile': Film Review Cohn was born on Feb. 4, 1927, in Basel, Switzerland. His father, Marcus, helped save many Jews living in Switzerland during World War II, and as assistant attorney general, was involved in setting up the legal system in the new state of Israel. His mother, Rose, was a poet. Cohn was a radio journalist before he turned to cinema, and Le ciel et la boue was the first film he produced. His first outing with De Sica, whom he considered a mentor, came on Woman Times Seven (1967), featuring Shirley MacLaine in seven different roles, and they followed with the dramas A Place for Lovers (1968), starring Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni; Sunflower (1970), with Sophia Loren and Mastroianni; Lo chiameremo Andrea (1972), featuring Nino Manfredi and Mariangela Melato; and A Brief Vacation (1973), starring Florinda Bolkan. De Sica made two more features before he died in 1974. "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis was turned down by nine distributors, Black and White in Color by 15 and Dangerous Moves by 22," Cohn noted. "I didn't allow anybody to tell me those films were nothing, but they all found a home in Europe, thanks only to the Oscars they won. The Academy did a tremendous thing." In 1981, Cohn earned his second Oscar documentary nom for producing The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe - 1933-1945. He said a screening of One Day in September in Munich led to the German government paying the families of the Israeli victims for the first time. Those "millions of dollars," he said, were "a side effect of the film that was not planned." Cohn's producing credits also included Two Bits (1995), starring Al Pacino; White Lies (1997), with Rosanna Arquette and Harvey Fierstein; The Yellow Handkerchief (2008), starring William Hurt, Maria Bello and Kristen Stewart; and The Children of Huang Shi (2008), starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. In 1992, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, becoming the first non-American producer ever so honored. "I always say a good script is 50 percent of the film," he said. "A solid script a mediocre director can't ruin; a mediocre script a good director cannot salvage. This enormous importance I give to developing a script to past perfection is very rare, even in Europe." Scott Feinberg contributed to this report. THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day Subscribe Sign Up Noah Baumbach 'Awards Chatter' Pod: Noah Baumbach on 'Jay Kelly,' Awkwardness of Semi-Autobiographical Films, and Falling in Love With Greta Gerwig On Sc