Bert Coote smoking a cigarette

Born in London, the music hall comedian and actor Bert Coote (1868-1838), son of the prolific Victorian composer of popular music Charles Coote, married the dancer Ada Russell. Bert Coote made his stage debut at Sadler’s Wells in December 1873 as one of the babes in the pantomime Babes in the Wood, and at Christmas 1877 he and his sister Lizzie played Clown and Columbine in the Adelphi Theatre’s children’s pantomime, Blanchard’s Goody Two Shoes. By the 1890s was appearing in the USA in Seattle where he played Billy Giltedge in Little Puck at the Seattle Opera House, May 1892, and Hector Timid in Dead Shot at Cordray’s Theatre, February 1893. His son was the successful actor Robert Coote (1909- 1982) who created the role of Colonel Pickering in the original 1956 Broadway run of Lerner and Loewe’s musical My Fair Lady.