Ernest Cossart

Ernest Cossart
from the trailer for the film The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Born	Emil Gottfried von Holst (1876-09-24)24 September 1876 Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
Died	21 January 1951(1951-01-21) (aged 74) New York City, New York, USA
Years active	1916-1950
Spouse(s)	Maude Davis (1906–1951; his death)

Ernest Cossart (24 September 1876 – 21 January 1951) was an English actor. After a stage career in England, he moved to the US, appearing on Broadway and all around the country. In the 1930s and 1940s, he appeared in films, specialising in playing butlers, valets, and similar roles, but playing a range of other parts.

Cossart was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire as Emil Gottfried von Holst, the younger of the two children of Adolph von Holst (1846–1901), a professional musician, and his first wife, Clara née Lediard (1841–1882). The elder child, Gustavus, later known as Gustav Holst, became a leading English composer. Emil attended Cheltenham Grammar School and then became a clerk in a wine company's office. When he decided to pursue an acting career, he took the stage name Ernest Cossart, appearing on stage in Britain before moving to the US in 1908, working in Broadway productions and all over the country. During the First World War, he served in the Canadian army and was severely wounded. After the war, he appeared in musical comedy in the West End before returning to Broadway in 1919.

In the late 1920s, Cossart made a return to the London stage, acting with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in a West End transfer of a Broadway success, Caprice. In 1932, he appeared as Colonel Tallboys in the world premiere of Bernard Shaw's Too True to Be Good, with Beatrice Lillie and Leo G. Carroll.

Cossard moved into acting in Hollywood films in the 1930s. He was often typecast as butlers;The New York Times said of him:

Butlers, the supreme gift of the British Empire to Hollywood and mystery fiction, are the specialty of Ernest Cossart. You have seen him buttling with frozen gravity and punctilio of bedtick vest in "Two for Tonight" and "Accent on Youth," and you will now see him as the correct gentleman's gentleman in "Angel," which Ernst Lubitsch has made with Marlene Dietrich and Herbert Marshall.