Dorothy Montana Coburn (June 8, 1905 – May 15, 1978) was an American film actress who appeared in a number of early Laurel and Hardy silents. She was a niece of author Walt Coburn and granddaughter of Robert Coburn Sr., founder of the Circle C Ranch in Montana.^[1]

Early years

Coburn was born to cowboy-poet and Western film producer Wallace Coburn and Ann Reifenrath Coburn in Great Falls, Montana but raised in Prescott, Arizona.^[1]

Career

Her documented film repertoire consisted of 16 silent short subjects for the Hal Roach studios, and she appeared in scores of films as horseback-stuntwoman opposite such stars as Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea^{[citation needed]}, and as a stand-in for Ginger Rogers in several of her dancing films with Fred Astaire.^[1] Coburn retired from the movie business in the early 1930s. An accomplished rider and a fit athlete, Coburn occasionally worked as a stunt performer in westerns.

Later years

After leaving the movie business in 1936, she found employment as a receptionist for an insurance company. She was married twice. Coburn died in 1978, aged 72, from emphysema.^[1] She is interred in Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.^[2]

Before her death, Dorothy Coburn lived in Rancho Palos Verdes with her second husband, Harry W. Heap. Mr. Heap would die in Sandoval, New Mexico on January 7, 1994. They married in 1973 in Santa Barbara, CA. Her previous husband was Joseph Maier who died in Santa Barbara on March 4, 1959.^[3]

Filmography