|
Home
Word
of the Day
Archives
Clever
Clue of the Month
The
Cruciverbalist
Links
Daily
Email
|
|
LAHR
(lar)
American
comic actor Common
clues:
Cowardly
Lion portrayer; Fearful feline actor Bert; Costar with Bolger and
Haley; “If I Only Had the Nerve” singer; Lionized
actor?; Garland costar, 1939 Crossword
puzzle frequency:
5 times a year Frequency
in English language:
62396 / 86800 Video: Wizard
of Oz trailer
After
The Wizard Of Oz I was typecast as a lion, and there aren't all
that many parts for lions
~ Bert Lahr
Bert
Lahr, born Irving Lahrheim, (August 13, 1895 – December 4,
1967) was a Tony Award-winning American comic actor. Born in New
York City, he is best remembered today for his role as the
Cowardly Lion (and the farmworker "Zeke") in the
classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, but known during his life
for a career in burlesque, vaudeville and Broadway.
Lahr
made his feature film debut in 1931's Flying High playing the
part of the oddball inventor that he had previously played on
stage. He appeared in a number of musical shorts in the years
following. In 1938, he came back to Hollywood to work on a number
of feature films including: Merry Go Round of 1938 (1937), Love
and Hisses (1937), Josette (1938), Just Around the Corner (1938)
and Zaza (1939). Aside from The Wizard of Oz (1939), his movie
career never caught on, possibly because his gestures and
reactions were too broad for that intimate medium. His later life
was troubled, although he made the transition to straight
theatre. He costarred in a much-praised version of Waiting for
Godot in 1956 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, Florida in
which he played Estragon to Tom Ewell's Vladimir. Lahr thought of
himself as the "top banana" in the production, telling
Ewell "not to crowd him". (When Beckett learned of
this, he complained that the play was being taken away from his
"major character", Vladimir).
In
1967, Lahr died of pneumonia in New York City in the middle of
filming The Night They Raided Minksy's, forcing producers to use
a double in several scenes. Fittingly, this last role was as a
burlesque comic. Lahr is buried in Field Cemetery, Flushing,
Queens.
His
son, New Yorker theater critic John Lahr, wrote a biography of
his father's life titled Notes
on a Cowardly Lion.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Bert Lahr".
|
|
|