Caroline Burke

Burke was born Caroline Flora Berg on July 7, 1913, in Portland, Oregon Her father, a native of San Francisco, also founded the Charles F. Berg Company, a local Portland women's clothing chain, and co-produced "The Hoot Owls," a pioneering radio sketch show for KGW. The Charles F. Berg Building, an Art Deco building in downtown Portland that served as one of the Berg storefronts, is named for her father, who died there of a heart attack in 1932. She had one elder brother, Forrest Talbott Berg, Burke graduated from the Catlin Hillside School (now Catlin Gabel School), ==Career==

In 1941 and 1942, Burke appeared on Broadway in productions of Brooklyn, U.S.A. and Gilbert Miller's Heart of a City, respectively. It was noted in a July 1, 1942 article in the Detroit Free Press: Burke appeared in a total of four films, with her first and only leading role as Martha Kincaid in The Mysterious Rider (1942) opposite Buster Crabbe. While appearing in films in Hollywood, she simultaneously worked as an advertising and radio editor in California. She spent her later life living and working in New York City, where she was a theatrical producer, co-producing Broadway stagings of Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man, and Brendan Behan's The Hostage. In 1962, she produced the first stage productions of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and The Collection at the Cherry Lane Theatre. In her later life, she was also a contributing editor for Diplomat magazine, and taught television production at Columbia University. At the time of her death in 1964, she was in the midst of producing an Off-Broadway production of Pinter's first play, The Room. ==Art collection==

In addition to her career in entertainment, Burke was an avid art collector, and founded the art history department at Reed College in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She and her husband's art collection included works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Édouard Vuillard, Georges Rouault; and sculpture by Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Georges Braque, and William Zorach. The Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon is owned by the Library of Congress, and contains 2,085 drawings, prints, and paintings related to the art of caricature, cartoon, and illustration. ==Personal life==

On August 7, 1945, Burke married camera manufacturing magnate Cyrus Max Adler at the Portland home of her brother, Forrest, in a private Jewish ceremony. Burke later married advertising executive Erwin D. Swann, who worked for the Foote, Cone & Belding Ad Agency; the couple resided in Manhattan at 24 West 55th Street. ==Death==

Burke died of undisclosed causes at Memorial Hospital in Manhattan on December 5, 1964. She was survived by her husband, as well as her mother, Saidee Berg, and her brother, Forrest Berg. ==Filmography==

Production As performer ==References==