Lahr was born Irving Lahrheim on August 13, 1895 in New York City. Like his co-stars Ray Bolger and Jack Haley, Lahr grew up in poverty and got his start in burlesque and vaudeville acts.
In 1927, Lahr began appearing in Broadway productions, including the revue Life Begins at 8:40 with Bolger. He worked several times on Broadway with Oz lyricist E.Y. Harburg, who was the first to suggest Lahr for the lion role. MGM execs had first considered using the studio's trademark, Leo the Lion, for the part and dubbing in its dialogue. When those plans fell through, Lahr was the first actor considered.
Lahr was an eighth-grade dropout, and, according to The Making of The Wizard of Oz by Aljean Harmetz, he'd never heard of L. Frank Baum's book when he was asked to do the movie. He enjoyed the script, however, and signed on.
The years surrounding the 1938 filming were especially unhappy for Lahr, according to Harmetz. His wife, Mercides, had spent the past seven years in an institution, and Lahr had spent nearly a quarter-million dollars unsuccessfully trying to cure her. In the meantime, he'd fallen in love with another woman, Mildred Schroeder, but he was unable to annul his first marriage. To spite Lahr, Mildred had married another man, who in turn sued Lahr for being a "love thief". By the time filming began for Oz, Mildred was divorced and back with Lahr, but they would not be able to marry for two more unhappy years.
Lahr's unhappiness never showed up in the film, but it showed on the set. He was constantly anxious, suffered from a variety of imagined illnesses, and was unable to sleep. He fidgeted desperately with his Cowardly Lion costume, Harmetz wrote, twisting and turning his whiskers and tail. The costume itself was another source of anxiety. The actual lion's fur he wore weighed around 70 pounds, and his makeup forced him to sip soup through a straw at lunchtime.
The boundless energy that made Lahr the perfect lion made him difficult to cast in other films. He made just 24 others during his career. His biggest acting success, according to many critics, was on Broadway in 1956, when he starred in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.
A New York Times reviewer called Lahr's performance in Godot "glorious" and wrote, "Mr. Lahr is an actor in the pantomime tradition who has a thousand ways to move and a hundred ways to grimace in order to make the story interesting and theatrical, and touching, too."
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