Oscar Shaw (born Oscar Schwartz, October 11, 1887, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – died March 6, 1967, in Little Neck, New York), was a stage and screen actor and singer, remembered primarily today for his role as Bob Adams in the first film starring the Marx Bros., The Cocoanuts (1929). United States census records show that Shaw was already working as a stage actor in 1910, while still living with his mother, brother, and stepfather.
In 1913, Shaw married Mary Louise Givler (a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania), in England, where they both appeared in a show called the "First American Ragtime Review" at the London Opera House. The couple lived in the Village of Great Neck Estates, and in 1937, later moved to the Thomaston section of Great Neck, first in a private home, and later lived in an apartment building on Welwyn Road.
His wife died March 31, 1964, at the age of 77. Shaw died on March 6, 1967 at the age of 79. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In addition to selling his Myrtle Drive home in 1937, Shaw settled a lawsuit with an actress, Florence Roberts (stage name: Etna Ross), who brought a $50,000 lawsuit against Shaw, who allegedly had thrown her down a staircase while the two worked together in a road company. The suit was settled in January 1937.
Shaw sold his home on 9 Myrtle Drive in March 1937. It is not known if the sale of his home had anything to do with the settlement of the lawsuit from two months earlier that year.
Here is a brief chronology of some of Oscar Shaw's shows and movies: