Coral Browne

Coral Edith Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian-American stage and screen actress. Her extensive theatre credits included Broadway productions of Macbeth (1956), The Rehearsal (1963) and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965). She won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983). Her film appearances included Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972) and Dreamchild (1985). She was also actor Vincent Price's third wife.[1]

Coral Browne
Browne at Academy Awards (March 1989)
Born	Coral Edith Brown 23 July 1913 Melbourne, Australia
Died	29 May 1991 (aged 77) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1933–85
Spouse(s)	Philip Pearman ​ ​ (m. 1950; died 1964)​ Vincent Price ​ (m. 1974)​

Family

Coral Edith Browne was the only daughter of Leslie Clarence Brown (1890–1957),[2] and Victoria Elizabeth Brown (1890–?), née Bennett.[3][4] She and her two brothers were raised in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne.

Career

Coral Browne in 1931

She studied at the National Gallery Art School. Her amateur debut was as Gloria in Shaw's You Never Can Tell, directed by Frank Clewlow. Gregan McMahon snapped her up for her professional debut as "Margaret Orme" in Loyalties at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre on 2 May 1931, aged 17. She was still billed as "Brown", the "e" being added in 1936.[5]

At the age of 21, with just £50 on her and a letter of introduction to famed actress Marie Tempest from Gregan McMahon,[6] she emigrated to England where she became established as a stage actress, notably as leading lady to Jack Buchanan in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs Cheyney, W. Somerset Maugham's Lady Frederick[6] and Alan Melville's Castle in the Air. She was a regular performer in productions at the Savoy Theatre in London and was resident in the hotel for many years, including throughout World War II. When the original British touring production of The Man Who Came to Dinner ran into financial difficulty and could not be produced in London, Browne borrowed money from her dentist and bought the rights to the play, successfully staging it at the Savoy.[7] She received royalties from the play from all future productions.

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). Her television debut came in January 1938, when she appeared in a BBC Television production of The Billiard Room Mystery.[8] Throughout her career, she was a regular performer on BBC Radio and appeared in numerous radio dramas, including Dinner at Eight,[9] The Second Mrs. Tanqueray,[10] The Caspary Affair,[11] The Tragedy of Othello,[12] Oedipus The King,[13] Hamlet,[14] The Infernal Machine,[15] Two Mothers,[15] Captain Brassbound's Conversion[16] and The Eyes of Youth[17] amongst many others. In 1961, Browne was the featured castaway on Desert Island Discs, hosted by Roy Plomley.[18] Television plays for the BBC included Charley's Aunt in 1969,[19] Lady Windermere's Fan in 1972,[20] Mrs. Warren's Profession also in 1972[21] and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1974.[22]

In 1969, Browne appeared in the poorly received 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 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the Royal Shakespeare Company) production of Hamlet in 1958, she met the spy Guy Burgess.[23] This meeting became the basis of Alan Bennett's script for the television movie An Englishman Abroad (1983) in which Browne played herself, apparently including some of her conversations with Burgess. Burgess, who had found solace in his exile by continually playing the music of Jack Buchanan, asked Browne if she had known Buchanan. "I suppose so", the actress replied, "we nearly got married". On the BFI TV 100, a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute (BFI), chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened, An Englishman Abroad was listed at No. 30.

Her other notable film of this period, Dreamchild (1986) concerned the author Lewis Carroll. In the film, Browne gave an affecting account of the later life of Alice Liddell who had inspired the tale Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Personal life

Browne married actor Philip Pearman in 1950,[24] and remained married to him until his death in 1964.[25] While making the film Theatre of Blood (1973), she met actor Vincent Price; they married on 24 October 1974. They appeared together in a short-lived 1979 CBS TV series, Time Express, as well as an earlier international stage adaptation of Ardèle which played in the US as well as in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne & Price starred together in a BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf first airing in 1975.[26]

She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1987 as a gift to Price who later converted to Catholicism for her (she had converted many years previously).

Browne died on 29 May 1991 in Los Angeles, California, from breast cancer; she was 77. After her death, she was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Rose Garden at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. She had no children from her marriages. Price died two years later.

Awards

Browne was awarded the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress 1984 for her role in An Englishman Abroad. She later received the London Evening Standard British Film Awards for Best Actress in 1986 for Dreamchild. In 1976, the Los Angeles Theatre Critics named her Best Actress for her role in Travesties at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

Personality

When told by the Royal Shakespeare Company that there was no suitable role in their upcoming production of King Lear for her husband, Philip Pearman, she demanded a script and running through it she found the page she was looking for. "There you are", she said, "the perfect part. A small camp near Dover."[27]

Browne's language was colourful, and an unauthorized biography of her, This Effing Lady, was published. She was a devout Catholic (by conversion). The two aspects came together in a story of her standing outside Brompton Oratory after Sunday mass when an actor came up to her with gossip about who was sleeping with someone else's wife. She stopped him in his tracks with: "I don't want to hear this filth. Not with me standing here in a state of fucking grace."

Alan Bennett: "When I said to Coral that I’d thought [Cecil] Beaton was gay she remarked, 'Not when he was with me, darling. Like a rat up a drainpipe.'"

The younger Australian performer Barry Humphries paid tribute to Browne at her memorial service with an appropriate poem: "She left behind an emptiness/A gap, a void, a trough/The world is quite a good deal less/Since Coral Browne fucked off."[28]

Biographies

• Browne was the subject of a biography, The Coral Browne Story: Theatrical Life and Times of a Lustrous Australian, by Barbara Angell.[29] This was published May 2007 and launched at the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, on 14 June of that year.
• Coral Browne: 'This Effing Lady', by Rose Collis, published by Oberon Books, was launched at the Royal National Theatre, 4 October 2007.[30]

In 2018, an Australian stage play Coral Browne - This F***ing Lady was staged by Maureen Sherlock starring Genevieve Mooy as Browne.[31]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1933	Waltzing Matilda
1935	Line Engaged	Doreen
1935	Charing Cross Road	Lady Ruston
1936	The Amateur Gentleman	Pauline Darville
1936	Guilty Melody	Cecile
1938	We're Going to Be Rich	Pearl
1938	Yellow Sands	Emma Copplestone
1939	Footsteps in the Sand	Lily James
1939	The Nursemaid Who Disappeared	Mabel Barnes
1940	Let George Do It!	Iris	AKA, To Hell with Hitler
1946	Piccadilly Incident	Virginia Pearson
1947	The Courtneys of Curzon Street	Valerie	AKA, Kathy's Love Affair
1954	Twist of Fate	Helen
1958	Auntie Mame	Vera Charles
1961	The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone	Meg
1962	Go to Blazes	Colette
1963	Tamahine	Madame Becque
1963	Dr. Crippen	Belle Elmore
1967	The Night of the Generals	Eleanore von Seidlitz-Gabler
1968	The Legend of Lylah Clare	Molly Luther
1968	The Killing of Sister George	Mercy Croft
1972	The Ruling Class	Lady Claire Gurney
1973	Theatre of Blood	Chloe Moon
1975	The Drowning Pool	Olivia Devereaux
1980	Xanadu	Heavenly Voice #2	Voice
1984	American Dreamer	Margaret McMann
1985	Dreamchild	Alice Hargreaves
1987	Sparky's Magic Piano		Voice, Video, (final film role)

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1952	Affairs of State		TV film
1955	Simon and Laura	Laura Foster	TV film
1956	London Playhouse	Amanda Pinkerton	"The Guv'nor"
1956	ITV Television Playhouse		"Castle in the Air"
1969	Play of the Month	Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez	"Charley's Aunt"
1972	Stage 2	Mrs. Kitty Warren	"Mrs. Warren's Profession"
1972	Play of the Month	Mrs. Erlynne	"Lady Windermere's Fan"
1974	Play of the Month	Lady Bracknell	"The Importance of Being Earnest"
1979	Time Express	Margaret 'Maggie' Winters	Main role
1982	Eleanor, First Lady of the World	Lady Reading	TV film
1983	An Englishman Abroad	Herself	TV film

Notable stage

• A Warm Corner Comedy Theatre, Melbourne c. 1930
• The Roof Comedy Theatre, Melbourne 1931
• Loyalties Comedy Theatre, Melbourne May 1931
• Hay Fever
• The Quaker Girl
• The Apple Cart
• Dear Brutus
• Hedda Gabler
• Children in Uniform Melbourne
• Command to Love Melbourne
• Mated 1934 or 1935
• Lover's Leap, Vaudeville Theatre London 1935
• Basalik, London Arts Theatre Club 1935
• Desirable Residence, Embassy Theatre London 1935
• Heroes Don't Care, St. Martin's Theatre, London 10 June 1936
• The Taming of the Shrew, New London Theatre 1936–1937
• The Great Romancer, New London Theatre 1937
• The Gusher, Prince's Theatre, London 1937
• Believe It Or Not, New Theatre, London March 1940
• The Man Who Came to Dinner, Theatre Royal, Birmingham, England, 17 November 1941
• The Man Who Came to Dinner, Savoy Theatre, London, 4 December 1941–42
• My Sister Eileen, Savoy Theatre, London, 1943
• The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Savoy Theatre, London 1943–44
• Lady Frederick, Savoy Theatre, London, November 1946
• Lady Frederick, Grand Theatre, Blackpool, 21 April 1947
• Lady Frederick, Theatre Royal, Brighton, 16 June 1947
• Canaries Sometimes Sing, Grand Theatre, Blackpool, 3 November 1947
• Castle in the Air, Adelphi Theatre, London, 1949–50
• Othello, Old Vic Theatre, London, 31 October 1951
• King Lear, Old Vic, London, 3 March 1952
• Affairs of State, Theatre Royal, Brighton, 28 July 1952
• Affairs of State, Cambridge Theatre, Cambridge Circus, 21 August 1952
• Affairs of State, Hippodrome, Bristol, 1953–54
• Simon And Laura, Strand Theatre, London, 1954
• Nina Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 27 July 1955
• Macbeth Old Vic, London, 1955–56
• Macbeth Hippodrome, Bristol, 1955–56
• Tamburlaine the Greatm Playbill Winter Garden Theatre, New York, 19 January - 4 February 1956
• Tamburlaine the Great, Stratford, Ontario, Canada
• Macbeth, Winter Garden Theatre, New York, 29 October 1956 – 12 January 1957
• Troilus and Cressida, Winter Garden Theatre, New York, 26 December 1956 – 12 January 1957
• Hamlet, Old Vic, London, 1957–58
• A Midsummer Night's Dream, Old Vic, London, 1957–58
• The Pleasure of His Company, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1957–58
• Toys in the Attic, Piccadilly Theatre, London, 10 November 1960
• Bonne Soupe, The Comedy Theatre London, 1960
• Bonne Soupe, New Theatre, Oxford, 26 September 1961
• Bonne Soupe, Wyndham's Theatre London, 13 February 1962
• The Rehearsal, Royale Theatre, New York, 23 September - 28 December 1963
• The Right Honourable Gentleman, Billy Rose Theatre, New York, 19 October 1965 – 22 January 1966
• Lady Windermere's Fan, Phoenix Theatre, London, 1966
• Lady Windermere's Fan, Theatre Royal, Brighton, 23 August 1966
• What the Butler Saw, Queen's Theatre, London, 1969
• My Darling Daisy, Lyric Theatre, London, 1970
• Mrs. Warren's Profession, Old Vic, London, 1970–71
• The Sea, Royal Court, London, 1973–74
• The Waltz of the Toreadors Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1974
• Ardèle, Queen's Theatre, London, 1975
• Charley's Aunt, Cirque Dinner Theatre, Seattle, 12 August 1975
• Charley's Aunt Granny's Dinner Theatre, Dallas, 16 March – 10 April 1976
• Charley's Aunt, National U.S. tour, 10 May – 26 June 1976
• The Importance of Being Earnest, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 1976
• Travesties, Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, 1976

References

1. Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) by Victoria Price, ISBN 0-312-26789-4
2. Deaths: Brown, The Age, (Monday, 14 October 1957), p.11.
3. Marriages: Brown—Bennett, The Cobram Courier, (Thursday, 5 December 1912), p.4.
4. Rees, Anne, "Browne, Coral Edith (1913–1991)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, , 2015.
5. Stars of Australian Stage and Screen Hal Porter, Rigby Ltd. Adelaide 1965
6. "Return visit with Jack Buchanan is Coral Browne's hope". Argus. 3 April 1948. p. 7. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
7. ISBN 978-0-312-26789-6. St. Martin's Griffin (15 October 2000)
8. "The Billiard-Room Mystery - BBC Television - 14 January 1938 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
9. "Saturday-Night Theatre Coral Browne and Phyllis Neilson-Terry in 'DINNER AT EIGHT' - BBC Home Service Basic - 27 November 1943 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
10. "Saturday-Night Theatre Coral Browne, Malcolm Keen, and Jack Buchanan in 'THE SECOND MRS. TANQUERAY' - BBC Home Service Basic - 7 October 1944 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
11. "Musical Theatre of the Air: 16: The Caspary Affair - BBC Home Service Basic - 11 July 1946 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
12. "World Theatre: The Tragedy of Othello - BBC Home Service Basic - 27 February 1956 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
13. "Stephen Murray with Coral Browne and Leon Quartermaine in - Third Programme - 15 October 1957 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
14. "HAMLET - Third Programme - 23 October 1960 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
15. "THE INFERNAL MACHINE - Third Programme - 23 November 1960 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
16. "CAPTAIN BRASSBOUND'S CONVERSION - Third Programme - 17 December 1961 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
17. "SATURDAY-NIGHT THEATRE - BBC Home Service Basic - 20 January 1962 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
18. "DESERT ISLAND DISCS - BBC Home Service Basic - 11 September 1961 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
19. "Play of the Month: Charley's Aunt - BBC One London - 23 November 1969 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
20. "Lady Windermere's Fan - BBC One London - 14 May 1972 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
21. "Mrs Warren's Profession - BBC Two England - 3 October 1972 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
22. "Play of the Month - BBC One London - 17 February 1974 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk.
23. 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.
24. Coral Browne Wed, The Argus, (Tuesday, 27 June 1950), p.9.
25. "The Coral Browne Story - Book Reviews". Smh.com.au. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
26. "Saturday-Night Theatre". The Radio Times (2700). 7 August 1975. p. 17. ISSN 0033-8060. Retrieved 29 September 2017.
27. Ned Sherrin, Ned Sherrin's theatrical anecdotes: a connoisseur's collection of legends, stories, and gossip (London: Virgin, 1991)
28. "Coral Browne: This Effing Lady, by Rose Collis". Independent.co.uk. 28 October 2007. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
29. Barbara Angell at IMDb
30. "Culture". Telegraph.co.uk. 8 March 2017. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
31. "Coral Browne This F***ing Lady "Wise, funny, disarmingly honest .. "". Coral Browne Play.

References

• Coral Browne: 'This Effing Lady' (2007) by Rose Collis, Oberon Books, ISBN 978-1-84002-764-8
• The Coral Browne Story (2007) by Barbara Angell, ISBN 978-0-646-47322-2
• Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography (1999) by Victoria Price, ISBN 0-312-26789-4
• Who's Who (1991 edition) St. Martin's Press, 1991, p. 241
• Variety, 3 June 1991, p. 69
• The Daily Telegraph obituary (31 May 1991)

External links

• Coral Browne Collection at the Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
• Coral Browne at the Internet Broadway Database
• Coral Browne at IMDb
• Coral Browne at the BFI's Screenonline