Bert Lahr

format_quote "Cole Porter was a horrible piano player. 'Oompah, oompah,' he played with a slow, wooden tempo. If you didn't know who it was, you'd have thought he was a learner."

stars  Best known as the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

stars  Interred at Union Field Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York, USA.

stars  Bert Lahr's son, John Lahr, is now a drama critic with The New Yorker.

stars  Won Broadway's 1964 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical) for "Foxy." He also had a Tony nomination the previous year (1963) as Best Actor (Dramatic) for "The Beauty Part."

stars  He began seeing his future second wife Mildred in the early 1930s while his first wife was institutionalized. Mildred left him in March 1936 and married another man because he would not divorce his first wife. Mildred left her first husband by the end of 1936 and went back to Lahr, who obtained a divorce from his first wife a year later.