Dorothy Coburn
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (September 2018) |
Dorothy Montana Coburn (June 8, 1905 – May 15, 1978) was an American film actress who appeared in a number of early Laurel and Hardy silents. She was a niece of author Walt Coburn and granddaughter of Robert Coburn Sr., founder of the Circle C Ranch in Montana.[1]
Early years[edit]
Coburn was born to cowboy-poet and Western film producer Wallace Coburn and Ann Reifenrath Coburn in Great Falls, Montana but raised in Prescott, Arizona.[1]
Career[edit]
Her documented film repertoire consisted of 16 silent short subjects for the Hal Roach studios, and she appeared in scores of films as horseback-stuntwoman opposite such stars as Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea,[citation needed] and as a stand-in for Ginger Rogers in several of her dancing films with Fred Astaire.[1] Coburn retired from the movie business in the early 1930s. An accomplished rider and a fit athlete, Coburn occasionally worked as a stunt performer in westerns.
Later years[edit]
After leaving the movie business in 1936, she found employment as a receptionist for an insurance company. She was married twice. Coburn died in 1978, aged 72, from emphysema.[1] She is interred in Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[2]
Her first husband, Joseph Maier, died in Santa Barbara on March 4, 1959.[3] In 1973 she married Harry W. Heap in Santa Barbara, California. Before Coburn's death in 1978, the couple lived in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Filmography[edit]
- The Battle of the Century (1927)
- Putting Pants on Philip (1927)
- Us (1927)
- Hats Off (1927)
- The Second Hundred Years (1927)
- Sailors, Beware! (1927)
- Sugar Daddies (1927)
- All for Geraldine (1928)
- The Cross Country Bunion Race (1928)
- Do Gentlemen Snore? (1928)
- Look Pleasant (1928)
- That Night (1928)
- Rubber Necks (1928)
- Should Married Men Go Home? (1928)
- Barnum & Ringling, Inc. (1928)
- From Soup to Nuts (1928)
- The Finishing Touch (1928)
- Flying Elephants (1928)
- Leave 'Em Laughing (1928)
- Playin' Hookey (1928)
- Sailor Suits (1929)
- Up and Down Stairs (1930)
- Hot – And How! (1930)
- Shivering Shakespeare (1930)
References[edit]
- ^ a b c d D'Ambrosio, Brian (2019). Montana Entertainers: Famous and Almost Forgotten. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing Inc. pp. 35–37. ISBN 9781439667330. OCLC 1107577282.
- ^ "Dorothy Heep". The Californian. May 18, 1978. p. 29.
- ^ "Actress: Dorothy Coburn". www.classicvideostreams.com. Retrieved February 15, 2021.
External links[edit]
Media related to Dorothy Coburn at Wikimedia Commons- Dorothy Coburn at IMDb
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
- 1905 births
- 1978 deaths
- 20th-century American actresses
- Actresses from Arizona
- Actresses from Montana
- American silent film actresses
- American stunt performers
- Burials at Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery
- Deaths from emphysema
- Hal Roach Studios actors
- People from Great Falls, Montana
- People from Prescott, Arizona