Coral Browne; Stage, Film Actress in U.S. and Britain

Coral Browne, Australian-born British actress best known to American audiences as Vera Charles in the film “Auntie Mame” and as the wife of horror film star Vincent Price, has died of breast cancer. She was 77.

Price, whom she married in 1974, was at Miss Browne’s side when she died Wednesday in their Los Angeles home. The couple met when they performed together in the film “Theater of Blood,” a 1971 dark comedy in which an unhappy actor murders his critics.

Miss Browne began acting in Melbourne, but moved to England in 1934 and spent much of her career performing musical comedy on London’s West End stages.

One of her most memorable roles was in a 1983 British television film, “An Englishman Abroad,” based on her personal experience of meeting Guy Burgess, member of a ring of British diplomats who worked as spies for the Soviet Union. The encounter had occurred when Miss Browne was touring Russia with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Hamlet.”

The portrayal won for her the best actress award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts--Britain’s equivalent of an Emmy.

“That wasn’t a performance, really,” she said of her role in the semi-biographical play. “I was simply playing myself.”

Her films included “The Killing of Sister George,” “The Night of the Generals” and “The Ruling Class.”

One of her last efforts was the film “Dreamchild” in 1985, in which she portrayed an elderly Alice Hargreaves who, as a 10-year-old, had inspired Lewis Carroll’s classic story, “Alice in Wonderland.” The fact-based film had Miss Browne, then 71, as the 80-year-old Alice visiting New York for the observance of the 100th anniversary of Carroll’s birth.

Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas assessed Miss Browne’s work in “Dreamchild” as “a truly splendid performance” that helped save the film from sentimentality.

The role was one of her three favorites in her career, along with productions of “Macbeth” in New York and “The Waltz of the Toreadors” in London.

Miss Browne indicated at different times that she would have liked more work in her later years when she lived in Los Angeles with Price. But she said Hollywood offered few parts for an aging actress.

“Here,” she said wryly, “if you’re over 29, they’d be happy for you to go to Forest Lawn and not hurry back.”