Ivah Wills Coburn

Ivah Wills Coburn (born Ivah Myrtle Wills, August 19, 1878, Appleton City, Missouri; died April 27, 1937) was an American actress and Broadway producer. She was raised in Brookston, Indiana, and pursued formal training in drama at the Chicago Musical College.

Coburn launched her professional acting career in touring companies associated with E. H. Sothern and Amelia Bingham before establishing herself on Broadway. Her Broadway career spanned from 1916 to 1932 and encompassed both performing and producing work across more than a dozen productions. These included The Yellow Jacket (1916), The Imaginary Invalid (1917), The Better 'Ole (1918–1919), Three Showers (1920), French Leave (1920), The Bronx Express (1922), The Farmer's Wife (1924–1925), The Right Age to Marry (1926), a revival of The Yellow Jacket (1928–1929), Falstaff (1928–1929), The Plutocrat (1930), and Troilus and Cressida (1932).

Beyond Broadway, Coburn and her husband operated a touring repertory company that brought Shakespeare, French drama, Greek drama, and comedy to college campuses across the United States. The two also directed the Mohawk Drama Festival in Schenectady, New York, in both 1935 and 1936.

Coburn met her husband, actor Charles Coburn, while the two were performing in As You Like It, in which he played Orlando to her Rosalind. They married in Baltimore in 1906. Ivah Wills Coburn died on April 27, 1937, at Lenox Hill Hospital from intestinal influenza. Among the honorary pallbearers at her funeral were George M. Cohan, Theodore E. Steinway, Walter Hampden, Dixon Ryan Fox, Augustin Duncan, and Edgar Lee Masters. Following her death, Charles Coburn transitioned from the stage to film, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1944 for The More the Merrier.