Imogene Coca, 92, comedienne, actress

Imogene Coca of Westport, comedienne and the “sweetheart of the golden age of television,” died Saturday, June 2, at her home. She was 92 years old and had lived in Ridgefield in the 1950s.
Miss Coca, whose show business career spanned 80 years, began performing at the age of 11. Her mother, Sadie Brady, was a magician’s assistant, and her father, Joseph Fernandez de Coca, was a violin soloist with the Philadelphia symphony in his youth and later conducted an orchestra in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and for the Keith/Albee vaudeville circuit.
Watching him rehearse, the young Imogene “caught the bug.” At age 15, she was performing in Jimmy Durante’s Silver Slipper, a tony New York club. She made her Broadway debut in When You Smile, starring Jeanette MacDonald, and continued working as a singer/dancer in New York until her friend, producer Leonard Sillman, perceived another element to her talent.
Working with her first husband, Robert Burton, in New Faces of 1934, Mr. Sillman assigned her and a young Henry Fonda to entertain the audience with brief comedy routines in front of the curtain while the scenery was being changed.
>From 1950 to 1954, she starred with Sid Caesar in the NBC television award-winning “Your Show of Shows.” According to writer Sidney Fields, “Imogene Coca is the only TV comedienne who can convulse an audience with just a wink. With one grimace she can make her mouth threaten her chin; with another, one eye will battle her nose. The endless variety of expressions on her flexible face continuously amazes everyone including Max Liebman who directs Imogene.”
She later starred in “The Imogene Coca Show” and then a summer in London on the BBC. She appeared on Broadway with Robert Preston in Janus, and starred in the Broadway hit, The Girls in 509, where she met King Donovan, who became her second husband. Their long partnership on stage and off included more than 30 productions, including Plaza Suite, The Rivals, The Fourposter, Cabaret, and The Gin Game. In 1978 she was nominated for a Tony Award for On the Twentieth Century and later won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for her performance.
She received an Emmy nomination in 1988 for a guest appearance on “Moonlighting” and for a while even appeared in soap opera, appearing on “One Life to Live.” She co-starred in the CBS television special “The Sid Caesar-Imogene Coca-Carl Reiner-Howard Morris Show,” which won 11 Emmy Awards, and she was featured on variety shows with Danny Kaye, Carol Burnett, Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Elvis Presley, among others.
On film, Miss Coca is best remembered as Aunt Edna strapped onto the car roof in National Lampoon’s Vacation with Chevy Chase, and for her featured part in Under the Yum Yum Tree with Jack Lemmon.
Miss Coca received three Emmy Awards (1952 Best Actress, 1966/67 Outstanding Variety Special), the 1979 Board of Governors Award, and a Peabody Award. In 1987, she was honored with “The Lifetime Achievement in Comedy” Award, and in 1989 received the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Medal for “Artistry in Comedy.”
Miss Coca lived in Manhattan for most of her life, but often summered in the country, including periods in Ridgefield. She first came here in the fall of 1953, leasing a house on Silver Spring Lane. Mark Basile, a close longtime friend of Miss Coca, said she was probably introduced to the town by longtime Ridgefielders Debbie and Jack Rosenberg; Debbie Rosenberg was Miss Coca’s agent for most of her career.
“She had loved Ridgefield,” Mr. Basile said of Miss Coca.
At Miss Coca’s request, there will not be a funeral service. Donations in her memory may be made to the Imogene Coca Charitable Foundation c/o Price Financial Group, 37 North Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06851.