Buff Cobb
Encyclopedia
Buff Cobb was an American
actress and, with then-husband Mike Wallace
, host of one of television
's first talk show
s.
, to opera singer Frank Chapman, whose father was the ornithologist and pioneering writer of field guides Frank Michler Chapman, and playwright
Elizabeth Cobb, whose father was the author and humorist Irvin S. Cobb
. When she was young, her parents divorced and her father married mezzo-soprano
opera singer Gladys Swarthout
.
Her family moved first to New York City
and then to Santa Monica
, California
, where Cobb graduated from high school. She began her acting career with stock companies. She had bit parts in movies including Anna and the King of Siam (1946), and toured with Tallulah Bankhead
in Noel Coward
's play Private Lives
from 1946 to 1948.
While very young, she married Gregson Bautzer
, the first of her four husbands, divorcing him after six months. At 20, she married her second husband, actor William Eythe
, in Manhattan
in 1947; she sued for divorce after seven months, but reconsidered two days later before going on with the divorce in 1948.
in Chicago
, Illinois
, met broadcast journalist Mike Wallace
. As Wallace later recalled,
By that time the program had gone from radio to become the pioneering CBS
television
talk show
Mike and Buff. Based in New York City
, it ran from August 20, 1951 to February 27, 1953. Originally titled Two Sleepy People, the live show, in which the couple debated a different topic daily and then tried to reach consensus after interviewing experts, was broadcast experimentally on weekday mornings during an era in which there was virtually no morning programming. It was also one of CBS
' first color TV programs. By November 1951, it had been retitled Mike and Buff and was broadcast in black-and-white on weekday afternoons.
Beginning June 1951, the two also co-hosted a second show, All Around the Town, in which Wallace and Cobb conducted live interviews from locales including Coney Island
, the New York City Ballet
, and numerous restaurants. Initially a thrice-weekly late-afternoon show, and it moved to a Saturday 6-6:45 p.m. slot from November 10, 1951 to January 1952. It returned as a prime time
series, sponsored by the soft drink
Pepsi
, on Saturday nights at 9-9:30 p.m. from May to June 1952. The New York Times
critic Jack Gould
wrote in 1951 that "the presentation of Mike and Buff constituted an object lesson in how television can be eminently educational without being self-conscious about it."
Cobb was also a panelist for two years on the 1952 to 1960 TV quiz show
Masquerade Party
, joining Ogden Nash
, bandleader Bobby Sherwood
and others from 1953 to 1955 on the show, which during her tenure ran Monday nights on CBS before switching to Wednesday nights on ABC.
In the 1960s, she and partners including Paul Vroom produced two Broadway
shows: a revival of George Bernard Shaw
's Too True to Be Good
, which ran 94 performances and two previews at the 54th Street Theatre from March 9 to June 1, 1963; and Jerry Devine's Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory, which played nine performances and five previews from March 20 to April 4, 1964 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre
. The following decade, she and partner Shepard Traube produced Devine's Children of the Wind, which ran six performances and one preview from October 23-27, 1973, at the Belasco Theatre
.
Cobb died in a nursing home
in Lebanon
, New Hampshire
, at age 82.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actress and, with then-husband Mike Wallace
Mike Wallace (journalist)
Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host, actor and media personality. During his 60+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers....
, host of one of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
's first talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....
s.
Early life and career
Patrizia Cobb Chapman was born in Florence, ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, to opera singer Frank Chapman, whose father was the ornithologist and pioneering writer of field guides Frank Michler Chapman, and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
Elizabeth Cobb, whose father was the author and humorist Irvin S. Cobb
Irvin S. Cobb
Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was an American author, humorist, and columnist who lived in New York and authored more than 60 books and 300 short stories.-Biography:...
. When she was young, her parents divorced and her father married mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
opera singer Gladys Swarthout
Gladys Swarthout
Gladys Swarthout was an American mezzo-soprano opera singer.-Career:...
.
Her family moved first to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and then to Santa Monica
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where Cobb graduated from high school. She began her acting career with stock companies. She had bit parts in movies including Anna and the King of Siam (1946), and toured with Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
in Noel Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's play Private Lives
Private Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...
from 1946 to 1948.
While very young, she married Gregson Bautzer
Greg Bautzer
Gregson Edward Bautzer was a celebrity attorney, representing such stars as Ginger Rogers, Ingrid Bergman and Joan Crawford, Kirk Kerkorian, Howard Hughes and William R. Wilkerson...
, the first of her four husbands, divorcing him after six months. At 20, she married her second husband, actor William Eythe
William Eythe
William Eythe was an American actor of film, radio, television and stage.-Early life and career:Born in Mars, Pennsylvania, a small town located about 25 miles from Pittsburgh, he was interested in acting from a young age. He attended Carnegie Tech University and studied acting and he began...
, in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
in 1947; she sued for divorce after seven months, but reconsidered two days later before going on with the divorce in 1948.
Talk-show pioneer
Cobb, while touring with Private LivesPrivate Lives
Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...
in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, met broadcast journalist Mike Wallace
Mike Wallace (journalist)
Myron Leon "Mike" Wallace is an American journalist, former game show host, actor and media personality. During his 60+ year career, he has interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers....
. As Wallace later recalled,
By that time the program had gone from radio to become the pioneering CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....
Mike and Buff. Based in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, it ran from August 20, 1951 to February 27, 1953. Originally titled Two Sleepy People, the live show, in which the couple debated a different topic daily and then tried to reach consensus after interviewing experts, was broadcast experimentally on weekday mornings during an era in which there was virtually no morning programming. It was also one of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
' first color TV programs. By November 1951, it had been retitled Mike and Buff and was broadcast in black-and-white on weekday afternoons.
Beginning June 1951, the two also co-hosted a second show, All Around the Town, in which Wallace and Cobb conducted live interviews from locales including Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
, the New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...
, and numerous restaurants. Initially a thrice-weekly late-afternoon show, and it moved to a Saturday 6-6:45 p.m. slot from November 10, 1951 to January 1952. It returned as a prime time
Prime time
Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast programming during the middle of the evening for television programing.The term prime time is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example, from 19:00 to 22:00 or 20:00 to 23:00 Prime time or primetime is the block of broadcast...
series, sponsored by the soft drink
Soft drink
A soft drink is a non-alcoholic beverage that typically contains water , a sweetener, and a flavoring agent...
Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
, on Saturday nights at 9-9:30 p.m. from May to June 1952. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
critic Jack Gould
Jack Gould
Jack Gould was an American journalist and critic, who wrote influential commentary about television....
wrote in 1951 that "the presentation of Mike and Buff constituted an object lesson in how television can be eminently educational without being self-conscious about it."
Cobb was also a panelist for two years on the 1952 to 1960 TV quiz show
Quiz Show
Quiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film produced and directed by Robert Redford. Adapted by Paul Attanasio from Richard Goodwin's memoir Remembering America, the film is based upon the Twenty One quiz show scandal of the 1950s...
Masquerade Party
Masquerade Party
A syndicated revival was produced by Stefan Hatos and Monty Hall in 1974, hosted by Richard Dawson and announced by Jay Stewart. The basic premise was the same as the original show. Bill Bixby, Lee Meriweather, and Nipsey Russell were regular panelists. Col. Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried...
, joining Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
, bandleader Bobby Sherwood
Bobby Sherwood
Bobby Sherwood was a trumpet player, bandleader, actor and composer. He appeared in three films including Pal Joey in 1957. His sons Billy and Michael are both musicians....
and others from 1953 to 1955 on the show, which during her tenure ran Monday nights on CBS before switching to Wednesday nights on ABC.
Later life
Cobb and Wallace divorced in either 1955 or 1957 (accounts differ). Cobb's fourth husband, H. Spencer Martin, died in 1987. She had a half brother, Thomas Cobb Brody.In the 1960s, she and partners including Paul Vroom produced two Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
shows: a revival of George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Too True to Be Good
Too True to Be Good
Too True to Be Good is a comedy written by playwright George Bernard Shaw at the age of 76. The play was first staged at the Guild Theatre, New York, followed in the same year by a production in Malvern, Worcestershire. It has been shown at the Shaw Festival 3 times : 1982, 1994, 2006, see Shaw...
, which ran 94 performances and two previews at the 54th Street Theatre from March 9 to June 1, 1963; and Jerry Devine's Never Live Over a Pretzel Factory, which played nine performances and five previews from March 20 to April 4, 1964 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre
Eugene O'Neill Theatre
The Eugene O'Neill Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 230 West 49th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, it was built for the Shuberts as part of a theatre-hotel complex named for 19th century tragedian Edwin Forrest...
. The following decade, she and partner Shepard Traube produced Devine's Children of the Wind, which ran six performances and one preview from October 23-27, 1973, at the Belasco Theatre
Belasco Theatre
The Belasco Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 111 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan.-History:Designed by architect George Keister for impresario David Belasco, the interior featured Tiffany lighting and ceiling panels, rich woodwork and expansive murals by American artist...
.
Cobb died in a nursing home
Nursing home
A nursing home, convalescent home, skilled nursing unit , care home, rest home, or old people's home provides a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living...
in Lebanon
Lebanon, New Hampshire
As of the census of 2000, there were 12,568 people, 5,500 households, and 3,178 families residing in the city. The population density was 311.4 people per square mile . There were 5,707 housing units at an average density of 141.4 per square mile...
, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, at age 82.
Awards/nominations
- 1963 Tony AwardTony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
nomination, Best Producer of a Play, with Paul Vroom and Burry Fredrik, for Too True to Be GoodToo True to Be GoodToo True to Be Good is a comedy written by playwright George Bernard Shaw at the age of 76. The play was first staged at the Guild Theatre, New York, followed in the same year by a production in Malvern, Worcestershire. It has been shown at the Shaw Festival 3 times : 1982, 1994, 2006, see Shaw...
External links
- "Bill marries Buff Cobb" (annotated photo) at Flickr.com