Coral Browne
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coral Browne (July 23, 1913 - May 29, 1991) was an Australian stage and screen actress.
Contents |
[edit] Career
She was born Coral Edith Brown in Melbourne, Australia, where she began her stage career. At the age of 21 she migrated to England, where she became established as a stage actress. She began film acting in 1936, with her more famous roles being Vera Charles in Auntie Mame (1958), Mercy Croft in The Killing of Sister George (1968), and Lady Claire Gurney in The Ruling Class (1972).
In 1969, Browne appeared in the original production of Joe Orton's controversial farce What the Butler Saw in the West End at the Queen's Theatre with Sir Ralph Richardson, Stanley Baxter, and Hayward Morse.
While touring the Soviet Union in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in 1958, she met spy Guy Burgess. This meeting became the basis for the television movie An Englishman Abroad in which Browne played herself.
[edit] Personal life
She married actor Philip Pearman in 1950; he died in 1964. While making the film Theatre of Blood (1973), she met actor Vincent Price, and they married on October 24, 1974. She also allegedly conducted affairs with Firth Shephard, Jack Buchanan, Maurice Chevalier, Michael Hordern, and costume designer Cecil Beaton, as well as affairs with women. [1]
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1987 as a gift to Price, in exchange for which he converted to Roman Catholicism as a gift to her (she had converted many years previously).
She died in Los Angeles, California of breast cancer at the age of 77.
[edit] Tributes
Coral Browne: 'This Effing Lady', by Rose Collis, published by Oberon Books, was launched at the Royal National Theatre, 4 October 2007.[2]
She is the subject of a biography The Coral Browne Story: Theatrical Life and Times of a Lustrous Australian by the actress Barbara Angell [3]
[edit] References
- Alan Bennett gives the date of her meeting with Burgess as 1958 in the introduction to his Single Spies, which contains the text of An Englishman Abroad as a stage play and the text of A Question of Attribution about Anthony Blunt. Single Spies, London, Faber, 1989, ISBN 0-571-14105-6.
- Coral Browne: 'This Effing Lady', by Rose Collis, Oberon Books, ISBN 9781840027648
- The Coral Browne Story by Barbara Angell, ISBN 978 0 646 47322 2.[1]
- Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography by Victoria Price, ISBN 0-312-26789-4.
- Who's Who, 1991, St. Martin's Press, 1991, p. 241.
- Variety, June 3, 1991, p. 69.
[edit] External links
- Coral Browne at the Internet Broadway Database
- www.coralbrowne.com Coral Browne website
- garrygillard.net/CoralBrowne Coral Browne scrapbook
- Coral Browne biography and filmography at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
