Background
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).
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).
Emil attended Cheltenham Grammar School and then became a clerk in a wine company"s office.
After a stage career in England he moved to the United States, appearing on Broadway and all around the country. In the 1930s and 40s he appeared in films, specialising in playing butlers, valets and similar roles, but playing a range of other parts. The elder child, Gustavus, later known as Gustav Holst, became a leading English composer.
When he decided to pursue an acting career he took the stage name "Ernest Cossart", appearing on stage in Britain before moving to the United States 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.
In Angel, Cossart and Edward Everett Horton as the servants were judged to have had the best of the film.
In addition to such roles, Cossart played a range of different characters, appearing as Pa Monaghan with Ronald Reagan in Kings Row, and as Squire Brown in Tom Brown"s School Days. In two films he played Roman Catholic priests, one French and the other Irish-American.
Mary of Scotland (1933) as Lord Throgmorton.
