Coral Browne
USABiography of Coral Brown
Coral Edith Brown, the Australian theater and film actress, was born on July 23, 1913, in Footscray, Melbourne, Australia. She was the only daughter of a restaurant owner and had two brothers, Deneen and David. Brown studied at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne. Her amateur debut took place when she played Gloria in Bernard Shaw's play "You Never Can Tell".
Her professional debut as an actress came on May 2, 1931, when she played Margaret Orme in John Galsworthy's "Loyalties" at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre. At that time, her surname was still spelled as 'Brown', and the aristocratic 'e' at the end was added only in 1936.
In 1933, Coral Brown made her first appearance in a film, the Australian comedy "Waltzing Matilda". Two years later, she started regularly acting in films. Some of her notable roles include Vera Charles in "Auntie Mame" (1958), Mercy Croft in "The Killing of Sister George" (1968), and Claire Gurney in "The Ruling Class" (1972). Her last film role was as an aged Alice Liddell in the movie "Dreamchild" (1986).
In 1958, while on tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Soviet Union, Brown met the spy Guy Burgess. This encounter later became the basis for the screenplay of the film "An Englishman Abroad" (1983) by Alan Bennett. Brown was married twice. Her first husband was actor Philip Pearman, who died of cancer in 1964. She met Vincent Price on the set of the horror film "Theatre of Blood" (1972), and they married the following year. Brown passed away from breast cancer on May 27, 1991, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 77. She became a U.S. citizen in 1987 as a gift to her husband, who converted to Catholicism in return.
Despite not achieving star status until playing herself in Alan Bennett's television drama "An Englishman Abroad," Brown wisely invested her modest income and inherited wealth. After her death, it was revealed that she had an estate worth $6 million.
