About The Playwright

Janet Langhart Cohen, President of Langhart Communications, is an Emmy-nominated journalist who began her television career on CBS in Chicago. During her 25-year career, Mrs. Cohen has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC and BET; hosted ABC’s Good Day in Boston; covered special assignments for Entertainment Tonight; and produced several programs, including On Capitol Hill with Janet Langhart. As an overseas correspondent, she covered news in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Throughout her career, Mrs. Cohen interviewed many major newsmakers and leaders of the 20th century. Among the prominent people she interviewed are President Bill Clinton (who acknowledged her work in his last State of the Union address), President Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, Rosa Parks, General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Mel Gibson, Bill Cosby, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Denzel Washington, Dan Rather and Larry King.

Janet Langhart Cohen also has worked as a columnist for The Boston Herald, U.S. News and World Report, and served as spokeswoman for Avon Cosmetics. She has been a judge for the White House Fellows Program and judged the Miss America pageant. Mrs. Cohen is the wife of former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. She was known as "First Lady of the Pentagon," due to her active and visible public role while her husband was in office. She inspired several initiatives aimed at quality of life for the Defense Department’s military and civilian employees -- including the Military Family Forum, the Pentagon Pops concert series, the Secretary of Defense Annual Holiday Tour (an entertainment revue). Mrs. Cohen also created and hosted Special Assignment, a weekly television program that was broadcast globally over the Armed Forces Network from 1997 to 2001.

She wrote her first book, a memoir entitled, From Rage to Reason: My Life in Two Americas in 2004. In 2007, she and her husband co-wrote Love in Black and White, A Memoir about Race, Religion and Romance, about the bonds Langhart and Cohen share over similar life circumstances and backgrounds.

Most recently, Mrs. Cohen has written a one-act play -- "Anne and Emmett" -- an imagined conversation between Nazi child victim, Anne Frank, and child victim Emmett Till, of the Jim Crow southern United States. She also is actively involved in the provision of higher education for underprivileged children.

Playwright's Note:


October 2009 ~ Janet Langhart Cohen

To help me understand and articulate the need to find tolerance and harmony in the world rather than hate, I have turned to an imaginary vision of two historic and tragic victims of institutionalized terrorism, Anne Frank and Emmett Till. Anne Frank needs little exposition. Her Diary has been read by untold millions in virtually every country.

Anne’s story is that of a people in desperate need of help against Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Party that had goose stepped its way across much of Europe during the 1930’s and 1940’s, conquering country after country. Through the young, intelligent voice of Anne, we learn what it was like for her and her family to live in fear, to be forced to huddle together with others in a small, confined hideaway, and to cling to hope in their darkest hours as the Nazis came to cart them off to slave labor camps and crematoriums.

Read Full Story