Ernest Cossart

Ernest Cossart, born Emil Gottfried von Holst on 24 September 1876 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, was an English-American stage and screen actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1908 to 1949. He was the younger of two children born to Adolph von Holst, a professional musician, and his first wife, Clara, née Lediard. His elder brother, Gustavus, became the prominent English composer known as Gustav Holst. Cossart attended Cheltenham Grammar School and Dean Close School before taking a position as a clerk at a wine company. He eventually chose to pursue acting, adopting the stage name Ernest Cossart, and built an early career on the British stage before relocating to the United States in 1908.

Upon arriving in the US, Cossart established himself on Broadway and performed widely across the country. Among his Broadway productions were the musical The Girls of Gottenberg, as well as End of the World, Getting Married, and the play Accent on Youth. During the First World War, he served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and was severely wounded. Following the war, he worked in musical comedy in the West End before returning to Broadway in 1919. In the late 1920s, he appeared on the London stage alongside Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in Caprice, a West End transfer of a Broadway production. In 1932, he took the role of Colonel Tallboys in the world premiere of Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good, a production that also featured Beatrice Lillie and Leo G. Carroll. The following year, he appeared on Broadway in Mary of Scotland, playing Lord Throgmorton.

Cossart transitioned into Hollywood films during the 1930s and 1940s, where he became closely associated with the role of the butler or valet. He appeared in Two for Tonight and Accent on Youth in such capacities, and in Ernst Lubitsch's Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich and Herbert Marshall, he and Edward Everett Horton, playing the servants, were singled out as having delivered the film's strongest performances. Beyond these typecast roles, Cossart took on a broader range of characters, including Pa Monaghan opposite Ronald Reagan in Kings Row and Squire Brown in Tom Brown's School Days. He also portrayed Roman Catholic priests in two separate films, one French and one Irish-American in character.

During the Second World War, Cossart co-founded a relief fund for artists in distress in Britain, alongside Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Basil Rathbone, and other expatriate actors. He was survived by his wife, actress Maude Davis, and their daughter, actress Valerie Cossart, who lived from 1907 to 1994. Cossart died in New York on 21 January 1951 at the age of 74.