Charles Coburn

Coburn, Charles [Douville] (1877–1961), actor and manager. Born in Macon, Georgia, he began his career as a program seller at a Savannah theatre and by the age of seventeen was the playhouse's manager. Coburn later performed in stock in Chicago before making his New York debut in 1901 in Up York State. After heading a road company of The Christian (1904), he and his first wife, Ivah Wills Coburn, formed the Coburn Shakespearean Players in 1906 and toured for several seasons playing virtually the entire Shakespeare canon. His stocky build and slightly pompous style made him an especially notable Falstaff. In 1916 he produced and took a principal role in the Chinese drama The Yellow Jacket, a play he successfully revived on occasion. Coburn's best‐known role, however, was probably the bragging Old Bill in The Better 'Ole (1918). None of his later appearances was quite as popular, although he won praise as the day‐dreaming button‐maker David Hungerstolz in The Bronx Express (1922) and as widower Samuel Sweetland in The Farmer's Wife (1924). In 1925 he played James Telfer in an all‐star revival of Trelawny of the Wells. Later he accepted major assignments in several revivals mounted by The Players and in 1934 founded the Mohawk Drama Festival & Institute. Coburn retired from the stage after his wife's death in 1937 and enjoyed a long career in films, but he returned to tour as Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1946). For several summers shortly before his death he played Grandpa Vanderhof in You Can't Take It with You on the straw‐hat circuit.

• Born: Jun 19, 1877 in Savannah, Georgia
• Died: Aug 30, 1961 in Lenox Hill, New York
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '30s-'50s
• Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
• Career Highlights: Kings Row, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The More the Merrier
• First Major Screen Credit: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Biography

American actor Charles Coburn had already put in nearly forty years as a stage actor, producer, and director (specializing in Shakespeare) before making his screen debut at age 61 in Of Human Hearts (1938). At home in any kind of film, Coburn was most popular in comedies, and in 1943 won an Academy Award for his role in The More the Merrier as the bombastic but likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Coburn continued playing variations on his elderly scalawag character (he was the living image of the Monopoly-board millionaire) throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's erstwhile "sugar daddy" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The actor also kept busy on stage, touring with the Theatre Guild as Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and supervising the annual Mohawk Drama Festival at Schenectady's Union College, which he'd founded in 1934. Moving into television work with the enthusiasm of a novice, the octogenarian Coburn continued acting right up to his death. Coburn's last appearance, one week before his passing, was as Grandpa Vanderhoff in an Indianapolis summer-stock production of You Can't Take It With You. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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