Oscar Shaw

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Oscar Shaw (born Oscar Schwartz; October 11, 1887 – March 6, 1967) was a stage and screen actor and singer, remembered primarily today for his role as Bob Adams in the first film starring the Marx Brothers, The Cocoanuts (1929).

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 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.^[1]

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 until 1937, when they moved to the Thomaston section of Great Neck, first in a private home. They later lived in an apartment building on Welwyn Road.

Shaw sold his home on 9 Myrtle Drive in March 1937, two months after he had settled a lawsuit with an actress, Florence Roberts (stage name: Etna Ross), who brought a $50,000 lawsuit against Shaw, alleging that he had thrown her down a staircase while the two worked together in a road company. It is not known whether the sale of his home was related to the settlement of the lawsuit.

Shaw's wife died March 31, 1964, at the age of 77. Shaw died on March 6, 1967, in Little Neck, Queens, New York, at the age of 79. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.