Bert Lahr

Bert Lahr, whose real name was Irving Lahrheim, was an American comic performer from New York City who started on vaudeville stages while still a teenager, leaving school at 15 for a juvenile act. He reached Broadway in 1927 with Harry Delmar's Revels and found his first major musical success in Hold Everything!, followed by shows such as Flying High, Hot-Cha!, The Show is On, and DuBarry Was a Lady, in which he starred opposite Ethel Merman. His best-known screen role was the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (1939). He also made his feature film debut in Flying High, playing the aviator he had created on stage, though his movie career otherwise stayed limited. Later he took on serious theater, playing Estragon in the American premiere of Waiting for Godot in 1956 and reprising it on Broadway, and he won a Tony for the musical Foxy. He appeared on television in Let's Face It and The Fantasticks.