"Who has never heard of Coral Browne?"
I asked this question of my audience at
a Sydney seminar during late
2005 and three-quarters of it put its hand up. I was encouraged. I had
expected the ignorant to be present in greater numbers, but I under-estimated my audience, my luck was in and a
quarter of my captives did know Coral Browne. One or two had even seen her performing.
BARBARA ANGELL - author of the upcoming biography
"Another Coral
Browne Story"

Coral Browne in Out Of The Sea for the Playhouse Theatre, April 1934
Aged 20. Her mother, Vickie in background.
©
The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne
Coral Browne was Australian and
incredibly mega-famous, though few
Australians have heard of her. Australia had a habit of writing-off
anyone with the cheek to leave Australia and actually make good abroad
- especially if they remained abroad. Coral was one of those and the
media here stopped reporting anything about her from around 1940 -
which happened to coincide with some of her greatest triumphs at the
Savoy Theatre including My Sister
Eileen. Travel was not as easy then as now, so she couldn’t do a
Cate Blanchett or a Kylie Minogue and commute between jobs. Nor could
she do a Russell Crowe or a Judy Davis and get herself hired while
still living in Australia. It simply didn’t happen then.
So Coral Browne left Australia in 1934
at age 20, having already made a
big name here with Gregan McMahon's Playhouse and with JC Williamson,
and went to London with a return boat
ticket, to try her luck. She re-visited Oz only twice: in 1948 to
attend her grandmother’s wedding - yes, wedding - and in 1980 as the
wife of Vincent Price - yes, that Vincent Price.
She had a string of lovers,
occasionally dabbling in her own sex, and
was simply outrageous. For nearly 50 years smart London dinner parties
were not complete without repeating the latest hilarious “Coral Browne
story”. She was ultra-glamorous, had a razor wit and was the friend and
confidant of, and sometimes slept with, the most important people in
theatre. She died in 1991 a multi-millionairess, much to the amazement
of Vincent Price who had no idea that his wife was loaded.
A more mature Coral Browne
In her London Dressing room circa 1980
©
The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne
It’s all in the book. There is her wit
- much of it well known and
often repeated but some of it never reported before and re-discovered
in letters to her from friends such as Julie Harris, Alan Bennett, Alan
Bates, Joan Rivers (the list is endless). There are her lovers, Maurice
Chevalier, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Jack Buchanan and many others. There
is her sparkling career - she wowed Broadway with her Lady Macbeth and
Moscow with her Gertrude. She had hit plays written for her, notably
Simon and Laura by her good mate Alan Melville which she would have repeated
in Australia if JC Williamson hadn’t jumped the gun by mounting an
Aussie production without approaching her. She caused a stir by
performing the very first lesbian movie love scene (outside of the porn
market) with Susannah York in the The Killing of Sister George and she
knocked ‘em sideways with Rosalind Russell in the movie Aunty Mame, in
which she damn near stole the show as Vera Charles.
And you haven’t heard of Coral Browne?
Shame!
I started researching Coral’s papers in 1997 and would have
released
this book much sooner except that I got commissioned to write another
biography and someone was kind enough to pay me to do that research.
Payment in advance tends to get my attention, so Coral was put on hold.
Anyway I went back to her after my first biography A Woman’s War went
into its second edition (plug, plug) and resumed our loving
relationship in 2003. The child of our union is my superb book "Another
Coral Browne Story" and you now know where the title comes from.
"Another Coral Browne Story" will be published by New
Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Limited in June 2006, so pester your local bookshops
like mad.
OR - If you live outside or inside Australia: