Coral Browne

Coral Edith Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian-American stage and screen actress born in Melbourne, Australia, and raised in Footscray, a suburb of that city. The only daughter of railway clerk Leslie Clarence Brown and Victoria Elizabeth Brown, née Bennett, she grew up alongside two brothers. She studied at the National Gallery Art School before making her amateur debut as Gloria in Shaw's You Never Can Tell. Her professional debut followed on 2 May 1931, when director Gregan McMahon cast her as Margaret Orme in Loyalties at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre; she was seventeen and still billed under the surname Brown, the final "e" not being added until 1936.

At twenty-one, carrying £50 and a letter of introduction to actress Marie Tempest arranged by McMahon, Browne emigrated to England. She established herself as a leading stage actress there, appearing opposite Jack Buchanan in productions including Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs Cheyney, W. Somerset Maugham's Lady Frederick, and Alan Melville's Castle in the Air. She became a regular performer at the Savoy Theatre in London and resided in the hotel for many years, including throughout World War II. When a British touring production of The Man Who Came to Dinner encountered financial difficulties that prevented a London run, Browne borrowed money from her dentist to purchase the rights and staged it successfully at the Savoy, thereafter receiving royalties from all future productions of the play.

Browne's Broadway career spanned 1956 to 1965 and included the melodrama Tamburlaine the Great, Macbeth (1956), Troilus and Cressida, The Rehearsal (1963), and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965). In 1969 she appeared in the original West End production of Joe Orton's farce What the Butler Saw at the Queen's Theatre alongside Sir Ralph Richardson and Stanley Baxter. She also appeared in the international stage adaptation of Ardèle with her husband Vincent Price, a production that played in the United States as well as at London's Queen's Theatre. In 1976, the Los Angeles Theatre Critics named her Best Actress for her performance in Travesties at the Mark Taper Forum.

Her film career began in 1936. Among her more prominent screen roles were 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 in a BBC Television production of The Billiard Room Mystery, and throughout her career she appeared in numerous BBC Radio dramas and BBC television plays, including Charley's Aunt (1969), Lady Windermere's Fan (1972), Mrs. Warren's Profession (1972), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1974). In 1961 she was the featured castaway on Desert Island Discs, hosted by Roy Plomley.

While touring the Soviet Union in 1958 with a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre production of Hamlet, Browne encountered the exiled spy Guy Burgess. That meeting became the foundation for Alan Bennett's screenplay for the BBC television film An Englishman Abroad (1983), in which Browne played herself. The film earned her the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress in 1984, and in 2000 the British Film Institute ranked it thirtieth on its BFI TV 100 list of the greatest British television programmes. Bennett subsequently adapted the film for the stage under the title Single Spies, in which Prunella Scales portrayed Browne, while Penelope Wilton took the role in the BBC radio adaptation. Browne later received the London Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress in 1986 for Dreamchild, in which she portrayed the later life of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In her personal life, Browne married actor Philip Pearman in 1950, remaining married until his death in 1964. While filming Theatre of Blood in 1973, she met actor Vincent Price; the two married on 24 October 1974. They appeared together on stage in Ardèle, co-starred in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf in 1975, and appeared jointly in the 1979 CBS television miniseries Time Express. Browne became a naturalized United States citizen in 1987. She had no children from either marriage.

Browne died on 29 May 1991 in Los Angeles, California, from breast cancer at the age of seventy-seven. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Rose Garden at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Price died two years after her.