An interview with Cobina Wright (Sr.) – for the Arizona Highlights program on KTAR in Phoenix on January 27, 1950.
A name that most likely rings no bells, but during the 1940s all the way to her passing in 1970, Cobina Wright was one of the more popular gossip columnists in American newspapers.
Cobina Wright, Sr. (born Esther Ellen Cobb, September 20, 1887 – April 9, 1970) was an American opera singer and actress who appeared in The Razor’s Edge (1946). She gained later fame as a hostess and a syndicated gossip columnist for William Randolph Hearst’s King Features Syndicate.
She married and divorced twice. Her first husband, whom she married in 1912, was American novelist Owen Johnson; she was his second wife, and they divorced in 1917. Her second husband was William May Wright, a stockbroker, by whom she had one child, a daughter, Cobina Carolyn Wright (aka Cobina Wright Jr.), (1921—2011), briefly a movie actress. the Wrights were divorced in 1935.
In the early part of the 20th century, she was a coloratura soprano, using the stage name Esther Cobina. She had studied singing in California, under voice teacher Nettie Snyder, and in Germany, where she initially pursued her career on stage. During World War I, she performed for French and American troops in Europe. She later made her American opera debut at Carnegie Hall in 1924.
She died in Los Angeles in 1970.
That’s Cobina Wright Sr. in a nutshell – may not look like a whirlwind career, but together with her daughter and a fair share of scandals, both Cobina Sr. and Jr. were Topic A in conversation among society circles and epitomized Popular Culture throughout the mid-century period in America.
For a sample, here is that interview, done for KTAR Radio on January 27, 1950.
