Born on this date in 1895 was Bert Lahr, the American actor best known for his role as the Cowardly Lion and the Kansas farmworker Zeke in Wizard of Oz. 10 facts about him.
His real name was Irving Lahrheim. His parents were German Jewish immigrants.
He left school at 15 to join a juvenile vaudeville act.
Lahr was already well-known as a stage and Vaudeville star by the time he was cast as the Cowardly Lion. He’d made his Broadway debut in 1927 in Harry Delmar's Revels, and his first feature film was in Flying High in 1931.
He was married twice. His first wife, dancer and comedienne Mercedes Delpino, had mental health problems which resulted in her being permanently hospitalised. Lahr divorced her in the end because she was too ill to function as his wife, and he’d met and fallen for someone else, Mildred Schroeder. The divorce wasn’t straightforward though, and Midlred got tired of waiting and married someone else, although Lahr did win her back in the end, and they married and had three children. This didn’t mean he didn’t still love his first wife, however. When she died, he didn't speak a word for three days.
Lahr was a typical archetype of a Clown who performed on stage and made people laugh but was plagued by depression offstage. Lahr's son John would later write that his father was “plagued by morbid worry and moroseness," and that there were no mementoes in their home from his most famous role in Wizard of Oz.
He had some interesting hobbies. Aside from a fairly usual fondness for Golf, his other favourite pastimes were Embroidery and Tightrope walking.
He also gave serious theatre a go. Having read the script of the play Waiting for Godot and was very impressed by it, but unsure how such a revolutionary play would be received in America. Lahr played Estragon in a production in Florida in 1956, but it bombed. Some of the audience walked out, and critics panned it, although Lahr’s son John would later write that it was the director’s artistic choices that led to the failure of the play.
Lahr was a spokesman for Blatz Beer and also appeared in commercials for Lay's Potato Chips, introducing the famous phrase “Betcha can’t eat just one.”
When playing the Cowardly Lion, he’d often ad-lib lines on set which often resulted in scenes taking several takes because other members of the cast were laughing so much.
Lahr died on December 4, 1967, at the age of 72. He was in the middle of filming The Night They Raided Minsky's, and filming a night scene in December resulted in him catching pneumonia, which was the official cause of death, although he had terminal cancer, which he hadn’t known about when he signed up for the part. His last words were, “Mildred, why aren't my clothes laid out? I've got a seven o'clock call.”
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