Coral Edith Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian actress. Her extensive theatre credits included Broadway productions of Macbeth (1956), The Rehearsal (1963) and The Right Honourable Gentleman (1965). She won the 1984 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983). Her film appearances included Auntie Mame (1958), The Killing of Sister George (1968), The Ruling Class (1972) and Dreamchild (1985). Her second husband was actor Vincent Price.
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Family
Coral Edith Brown was the only daughter of railway clerk Leslie Clarence Brown (1890–1957), and Victoria Elizabeth Brown (1890–1989), née Bennett, both of Victorian birth. She and her two brothers were raised in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne.
Career
She studied at the National Gallery Art School. Her amateur debut was as Gloria in Shaw's You Never Can Tell, directed by Frank Clewlow.
Gregan McMahon snapped her up for her professional debut as "Margaret Orme" in Loyalties at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre on 2 May 1931, aged 17. She was still billed as "Brown", the "e" being added in 1936.
At the age of 21, with just £50 on her and a letter of introduction to famed actress Marie Tempest from Gregan McMahon, she emigrated to England where she became established as a stage actress, notably as leading lady to Jack Buchanan in Frederick Lonsdale's The Last of Mrs Cheyney, W. Somerset Maugham's Lady Frederick and Alan Melville's Castle in the Air. She was a regular performer in productions at the Savoy Theatre in London and was resident in the hotel for many years, including throughout World War II. When the original British touring production of The Man Who Came to Dinner ran into financial difficulty and could not be produced in London, Browne borrowed money from her dentist and bought the rights to the play, successfully staging it at the Savoy. She received royalties from the play from all future productions.
She began film acting in 1936, with her more famous roles being 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, when she appeared in a BBC Television production of The Billiard Room Mystery. Throughout her career, she was a regular performer on BBC Radio and appeared in numerous radio dramas, including Dinner at Eight, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The Caspary Affair, The Tragedy of Othello, Oedipus The King, Hamlet, The Infernal Machine, Two Mothers, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, The Eyes of Youth and Waters of the Moon amongst many others. In 1961, Browne was the featured castaway on Desert Island Discs, hosted by Roy Plomley. Television plays for the BBC included Charley's Aunt in 1969, Lady Windermere's Fan in 1972, Mrs. Warren's Profession also in 1972 and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1974.
In 1969, Browne appeared in the poorly received original production of Joe Orton's controversial farce What the Butler Saw in the West End at the Queen's Theatre with Sir Ralph Richardson, Stanley Baxter, and Hayward Morse.
Personal life
Browne married actor Philip Pearman in 1950, and remained married until his death in 1964. While making the film Theatre of Blood (1973), she met actor Vincent Price; they married on 24 October 1974. The two appeared together in the international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the US as well as in London at the Queen's Theatre. During this run, Browne and Price starred together in the BBC Radio play Night of the Wolf, first airing in 1975. The two subsequently appeared in the 1979 CBS TV miniseries Time Express.
She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1987 as a gift to Price who later converted to Catholicism for her (she had converted many years previously).
Browne died on 29 May 1991 in Los Angeles, California, from breast cancer; she was 77. After her death, she was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Rose Garden at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. She had no children from her marriages; Price died two years later.
Awards
Browne was awarded the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress 1984 for her role in An Englishman Abroad. She later received the London Evening Standard British Film Awards for Best Actress in 1986 for Dreamchild. In 1976, the Los Angeles Theatre Critics named her Best Actress for her role in Travesties at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
Personality
When told by the Royal Shakespeare Company that there was no suitable role in their upcoming production of King Lear for her husband, Philip Pearman, she demanded a script and running through it she found the page she was looking for. "There you are", she said, "the perfect part. A small camp near Dover."
Browne's language was colourful, which is acknowledged in the title of an unauthorized biography of her, This Effing Lady. She was a devout Catholic (by conversion). The two aspects came together in a story of her standing outside Brompton Oratory after Sunday mass when an actor came up to her with gossip about who was sleeping with someone else's wife. She stopped him in his tracks with: "I don't want to hear this filth. Not with me standing here in a state of fucking grace."
Alan Bennett: "When I said to Coral that I’d thought [Cecil] Beaton was gay she remarked, 'Not when he was with me, darling. Like a rat up a drainpipe.'"
The younger Australian performer Barry Humphries paid tribute to Browne at her memorial service with an appropriate poem: "She left behind an emptiness/A gap, a void, a trough/The world is quite a good deal less/Since Coral Browne fucked off."
Biographies
Browne was the subject of a biography, The Coral Browne Story: Theatrical Life and Times of a Lustrous Australian, by Barbara Angell. This was published May 2007 and launched at the Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, on 14 June of that year.
Coral Browne: 'This Effing Lady', by Rose Collis, published by Oberon Books, was launched at the Royal National Theatre, 4 October 2007.
In 2018, an Australian stage play Coral Browne – This F***ing Lady was staged by Maureen Sherlock starring Genevieve Mooy as Browne.
Filmography
Notable stage
A Warm Corner Comedy Theatre, Melbourne c. 1930
The Roof Comedy Theatre, Melbourne 1931
Loyalties Comedy Theatre, Melbourne May 1931
Hay Fever
The Quaker Girl
The Apple Cart
Dear Brutus
Hedda Gabler
Children in Uniform Melbourne
Command to Love Melbourne
Mated 1934 or 1935
Lover's Leap, Vaudeville Theatre London 1935
Basalik, London Arts Theatre Club 1935
Desirable Residence, Embassy Theatre London 1935
Heroes Don't Care, St. Martin's Theatre, London 10 June 1936
The Taming of the Shrew, New London Theatre 1936–1937
The Great Romancer, New London Theatre 1937
The Gusher, Prince's Theatre, London 1937
Believe It Or Not, New Theatre, London March 1940
The Man Who Came to Dinner, Theatre Royal, Birmingham, England, 17 November 1941
The Man Who Came to Dinner, Savoy Theatre, London, 4 December 1941–42
