Dorothy Coburn

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

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

Her documented film repertoire consisted of sixteen silent short subjects for the Hal Roach studios, but she also appeared in scores of films as horseback-stuntwoman opposite such stars as Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea, 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 also occasionally worked as a stunt performer in westerns. After the advent of sound, she was sometimes engaged as a stand-in for Rogers at RKO.

Later years

After leaving the movie business in 1936, she found employment as a receptionist for an insurance company. She was married twice and died in 1978, aged 72, from emphysema.[1]

She is interred in Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[2]

Filmography

References
  1. D'Ambrosio, Brian (2019). Montana Entertainers: Famous and Almost Forgotten. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing Inc. pp. 35–37. ISBN 9781439667330. OCLC 1107577282.
  2. "Dorothy Heep". The Californian. May 18, 1978. p. 29.
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