Carolyn Coates

A native of Oklahoma City, Coates was the younger of two daughters born to Jessica Owen and Glenn Clinton Coates.^[7] Her parents soon divorced, however, and, as noted in a 1973 interview, subsequent remarriages led to a decidedly unsettled pre-adolescence. As Coates recalled, "I was in 10 different schools before 10th grade." The resulting anxiety made her all the more appreciative upon discovering that "[t]he theater is like a family, like a home—all of the things I missed as a child."^[8]

After finally settling in Santa Monica, Coates studied acting at UCLA.^[3] There, she gained valuable experience, in roles such as Shakespeare's Juliet,^[9][10] Margaret in Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (starring opposite a young William Schallert),^[11] and Cybel in Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown.^[12] During this period, Coates also appeared in summer stock with the Bolton Landing Players, earning kudos as Millie in Frederick Jackson's The Bishop Misbehaves,^[13] and as Aunt Connie in Mark Reed's Yes, My Darling Daughter.^[14]

In 1954, Coates appeared as Agatha in the American premiere of Jean Giraudoux's Electra, staged at the Henry Street Playhouse in New York's Greenwich Village.^[15] The following year, she and erstwhile Pygmalion co-star James Noble were wed.^[16] Shortly thereafter, and continuing for roughly six years, they became featured performers in Paul J. Curtis's American Mime Theatre.

In 1965, her portrayal of Hecuba in Euripides' The Trojan Women earned Coates a Theatre World Award.^[3][17] In December of that year she was narrated "Sibelius: A Symphony for Finland," a 90-minute TV documentary commemorating the composer's centennial, which aired on NET's series Festival of the Arts.^[18][19]

In May 1967, Coates co-starred with Martin Sheen, Eugene Roche, Frederick Rolf and Eleanor Phelps on The Catholic Hour, in a series of four episodes addressing the question, "Is God dead?"^[20][21]

In 1985, Coates undertook what would later be termed, variously, a nine-year sabbatical or retirement, to volunteer in hospitals and on the phones for AIDS Project Los Angeles and the Gay Men's Health Crisis.^[6]

In 2001, New Haven's Long Wharf Theater hosted what would prove to be the actress's swan song, as Coates portrayed Gladys in Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery.^[3] Hartford Courant critic Malcolm Johnson writes:

This portrait of the mental disintegration of 85-year-old Gladys Green, acted by the tiny Carolyn Coates with shifts from lucidity and humor to crazy jumbles of words, will break the heart of anyone who has ever suffered through the decline of an aged parent or relative. [...] Coates' sometimes playful, sometimes dithering, occasionally volatile performance, sweet, charged with nostalgia and a confusion complicated by deafness, dominates Tillinger's production.^[22]

Having first met her future husband in 1951, playing Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins in a summer stock production of Pygmalion in Worcester, Massachusetts,^[3][6] Coates married actor James Noble in 1955.^[16] They had one child, a daughter.^[6]

On March 27, 2005, Coates died of cancer at the Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Connecticut, survived by her husband and daughter.^[3] Her remains are interred at the family plot in Muskogee, Oklahoma,^[6] alongside those of her husband.^[4]