Coral Browne

At 77 years old, Coral Browne has this physical status:

Coral Edith Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian-American stage and screen actress.

Her extensive theatre work included Broadway appearances of Macbeth (1956), The Rehearsal (1963), and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965).

For the BBC TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983), she received the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress.

Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972) and Dreamchild (1985) were among her film appearances.

Personal life

Browne married actor Philip Pearman in 1950 and was married until his death in 1964. She met actor Vincent Price while filming Theatre of Blood (1973), and the couple married on October 24, 1974. In the international stage version of Ardèle, the two actors appeared together in the United States as well as in London at the Queen's Theatre. Browne & Price appeared together in the BBC Radio Play Night of the Wolf, which first appeared on radio in 1975. The two appeared in the 1979 CBS TV miniseries Time Express.

Browne was bisexual, according to her step-daughter Victoria Price. In 1987, she became a naturalized United States citizen, who later converted to Catholicism for her (she had converted many years earlier).

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

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Career

She studied at the National Gallery Art School. Gloria in Shaw's You Never Can Tell, directed by Frank Clewlow, was her amateur debut. Gregan McMahon appeared in Loyalties at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre on May 2nd, aged 17. She was still branded "Brown," the "e" first introduced in 1936.

She emigrated to England, where she became a leading lady to Jack Buchanan in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs Cheyney, W. Somerset Maugham's Castle in the Air at the age of 21, with just £50 on her and a note of introduction to well-known actress Marie Tempest from Gregan McMahon. She appeared regularly in shows at the Savoy Theatre in London and was a resident in the hotel for many years, including during WWII. When the original British touring production of The Man Who Came to Dinner ran into financial difficulty and couldn't be delivered in London, Browne borrowed money from her dentist and acquired the right to the performance, with the Savoy successfully staging it. She was given royalties from the play of all future productions.

Vera Charles in Auntie Mame (1958), Mercy Croft (1968), and Lady Claire Gurney in The Ruling Class (1972) were among her early film appearances. Her television debut came in January 1938, when she appeared in a BBC Television version of The Billiard Room Mysteries. She appeared on BBC Radio Television throughout her career, including Dinner at Eight, The Caspary Affair, The Infernal Machine, Two Mothers, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, and The Eyes of Youth among others. Browne appeared on Desert Island Discs, hosted by Roy Plomley in 1961. Charley's Aunt appeared on television in 1969, Lady Windermere's Fan in 1972, and The Importance of Being Earnest were all written in 1974.

Browne appeared in Joe Orton's controversial farce What the Butler Saw in the West End at the Queen's Theatre in 1969 with Sir Ralph Richardson, Stanley Baxter, and Hayward Morse.

She met spy Guy Burgess while visiting the Soviet Union in a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (later the Royal Shakespeare Company's) production of Hamlet in 1958. This meeting became Alan Bennett's script for the television film 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 playing Jack Buchanan's music frequently, asked Browne if she had heard Buchanan. "I suppose so," the actress replied, "we almost got married." An Englishman Abroad was ranked at No. 104 on the BFI TV 100, a list of the best British television programs of any genre ever screened, compiled by a survey of industry professionals in 2000 to determine which were the best British television shows of any kind ever seen. 30.

Dreamchild (1986) was her other important film of the period, and Lewis Carroll was concerned. Browne's film gave an affecting glimpse of Alice Liddell's later life, which inspired the story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In Alan Bennett's production of his play An Englishman Abroad entitled Single Spies, Browne was portrayed by Prunella Scales. In the original film's BBC radio version, Penelope Wilton appeared as Browne. Coral Browne blasted the costumes in a televised documentary Caviar to the General Broad Broadcasting of UK Channel 4 in 1990, just before her death. When she made the film version, she remembered that the costume designer went to great lengths to figure out what she wore at the time the story was set, but when she saw the stage costumes she exclaimed: "I practically died." On Boxing Day, the Sally Army would not have had a hat on or out of a grab bag. I was devastated. I'll be armed with three attorneys and sue if the play ever comes to Broadway. "I consider it a defamation." Coral Browne, an Australian stage play, was staged by Maun Sherlock in 2018. Genevieve Mooy, who played Browne, was starred in this film. Amanda Muggleton appeared in Browne's later productions of the play.

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