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" in 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 throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's sugar daddy in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" in 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".
Of Human Hearts (1938)
Vivacious Lady (1938)
Bachelor Mother (1939)
Idiot's Delight (1939)
In Name Only (1939)
Made for Each Other (1939)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)
Edison, the Man (1940)
Kings Row (1941)
The Lady Eve (1941)
George Washington Slept Here (1942)
In This Our Life (1942)
The More the Merrier (1943)
Wilson (1944)
Rhapsody in Blue (1945)
Colonel Effingham's Raid (1946)
Lured (1947)
The Paradine Case (1948)
Impact (1949)
Mr. Music (1950)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Trouble Along the Way (1953)
The Long Wait (1954)
How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Town on Trial (1957)
The Story of Mankind (1957)
How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1958)
John Paul Jones (1959)
Stranger in My Arms (1959)
The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959)
Pepe (1960)
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