The Christmas book market is about to be flooded, if that’s the word for these somewhat juiceless jottings, by not one but two biographies of the actress Coral Browne. This dual assessment is perhaps just as well, as quite clearly there were two Coral Brownes, one a witheringly witty, ravishing (in the early 1960s she was voted one of the three most beautiful women in the world, along with Princess Grace and Nina of aristo folk singers Nina and Frederick), loyal and quintessentially ‘West End’ creature; the other an insecure, sour, mercenary, and often cruel self-creation, the Coral evident in her attitude to, and treatment of, the children of her second husband, the epicene actor Vincent Price.
Both books are high in fag-hagiography heaven, and both authors appear enamoured of their subject. But they have used exactly the same sources and interviewed precisely the same people, so it is hardly surprising that the same stories crop up in each in almost identical form and wording, though Miss Collis has a slight edge over Miss Angell, as she recognises and recounts, with cutting clarity, the less savoury side of the aging, fading star.
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