Robert Coote

Robert Coote (4 February 1909 – 26 November 1982) was an English stage and screen actor born in London, the son of vaudevillian and playwright Bert Coote. He was educated at Hurstpierpoint College in Sussex before leaving at age 16 to join a touring repertory company, performing in Britain, South Africa, and Australia. His West End debut came in 1931, and he subsequently built a career on both the London stage and in British films, including the 1936 Australian production Rangle River.

Coote arrived in Hollywood in the late 1930s, making his American film debut in The Thirteenth Chair (1937). He became known for playing pompous or aristocratic British types in supporting roles, among them Sgt. Bertie Higginbotham in Gunga Din (1939). His film work was interrupted when he served as a squadron leader in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, during which time he organized entertainment shows at CFB Rockcliffe. Following the war, he returned to the screen in Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), a film selected for the first-ever Royal Film Performance on 1 November 1946. Subsequent Hollywood credits included The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Forever Amber (1947), The Three Musketeers (1948), and Orson Welles' Othello (1951). His final feature film appearance came in 1973, when he portrayed one of the critics dispatched by Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood.

Coote's Broadway career spanned from 1953 to 1979 and included appearances in The Love of Four Colonels, Dear Charles, and The Jockey Club Stakes, among other productions. His most celebrated stage role came in 1956, when he originated the part of Colonel Pickering in the long-running Broadway production of My Fair Lady, which ran through 1962. The performance earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1957. He returned to the role in the musical's 1976–77 Broadway revival. He also originated the role of King Pellinore in the original Broadway production of Camelot, which ran from 1960 to 1963. He starred in My Fair Ladies and The Jockey Club Stakes in addition to his other Broadway engagements.

On television, Coote received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Timmy St. Clair in the NBC series The Rogues (1964–65). In 1966, he appeared alongside Jackie Gleason and Art Carney in a Honeymooners episode titled "The Honeymooners in England," broadcast on CBS from Miami. He guest-starred in an episode of the 1979 NBC anthology series $weepstake$, and his final role was in the 1981 NBC series Nero Wolfe, starring William Conrad, in which he played orchid nurse Theodore Horstmann, a character who received considerably more screen time in that production than in most other adaptations of the Nero Wolfe mysteries.

A close friend of actor David Niven, Coote shared a house with Niven in the late 1930s and later lived in a flat above Niven's garage for several years after World War II. Coote died in his sleep at the New York Athletic Club in November 1982 at the age of 73.