Coralie (Coral) Edith Price

Coral Browne (23 July 1913 – 29 May 1991) was an Australian stage and screen actress.

Browne was the only daughter of a restaurant-owner. She was raised in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, where she studied at the National Gallery Art School. Her amateur debut was as Gloria in Shaw's You Never Can Tell directed by Frank D Clewlow. Gregan McMahon snapped her up for her professional debut as Margaret Orme in Loyalties at Melbourne's Comedy Theatre on 2 May 1931 (she was still billed as "Brown", the "e" being added in 1936).[1] She had two brothers, Deneen and David.

At the age of 21, with just £50 and an introduction to Marie Tempest from Gregan McMahon,[2] she migrated 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[2] and Alan Melville's Castle in the Air. 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).

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.

While touring the Soviet Union in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in 1958, she met spy Guy Burgess.[3] This meeting became the basis of Alan Bennett's script for the television movie An Englishman Abroad (1983) in which Browne played herself, apparently including some of her conversations with Burgess. Burgess who had found solace in his exile by continually playing the music of Jack Buchanan, asked Coral Browne if she had known him. "I suppose so", the actress replied, "we nearly got married". Her other notable film of this period, Dreamchild (1986) concerned the author Lewis Carroll. In the film, Browne gave an affecting account of the later life of Alice Liddell who had inspired the tale Alice in Wonderland. [edit] Personal life

She married actor Philip Pearman in 1950; a bisexual, he died in 1964.[4] She also allegedly conducted affairs with Firth Shephard, Jack Buchanan, Maurice Chevalier, Paul Robeson, Michael Hordern, and costume designer Cecil Beaton, as well as affairs with women.[5] While making the film Theatre of Blood (1973), she met actor Vincent Price, and they married on 24 October 1974. They appeared together in the short lived CBS TV series Time Express in 1979.

She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1987 as a gift to Price, in exchange for which he converted to Roman Catholicism[citation needed] as a gift to her (she had converted many years previously).

She died in Los Angeles, California of breast cancer at the age of 77. There were no children from either marriage. [edit] Awards

Browne was awarded the BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress in 1984 for her role in An Englishman Abroad. She later received the London Evening Standard's British Film Award 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, Los Angeles. [edit] Tributes

She is the subject of a biography The Coral Browne Story: Theatrical Life and Times of a Lustrous Australian by Barbara Angell.[6] 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.