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Elisha Cook Jr.

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Elisha Vanslyck Cook, Jr. [1] (December 26, 1903 [2] [1] – May 18, 1995)[3] made a career playing cowardly villains and neurotics, earning the nickname "Hollywood's lightest heavy." Cook started out in vaudeville and then became a Broadway actor. In 1936 he settled in Hollywood and, after playing a series of college-aged parts, began a long stint playing weaklings or sadistic loser-hoods. In Universal's Phantom Lady, he portrays a slimy, intoxicated nightclub-orchestra drummer. Other notable roles include Wilmer the gunsel in The Maltese Falcon (1941), "pug ugly" Marty Waterman in Born to Kill, Harry Jones in The Big Sleep (1946), Torrey in Shane (1953), and George Peatty, the hen-pecked husband to Marie Windsor, in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956).

Biography

He was born in San Francisco to Elisha Vanslyck Cook, Sr. (1870-?), a pharmacist in San Francisco, California, USA [4]He grew up in Chicago and was a traveling actor in the East and Midwest before arriving in New York City, where Eugene O'Neill chose him to play in Ah, Wilderness!, which ran on Broadway for two years. [3]

His acting career spanned over sixty years. In the above roles and others, Cook's characters usually ended up being killed off (strangled, poisoned or shot); he was arguably Hollywood's most notable fall guy for many years. He made a rare appearance in slapstick comedy in the cameo role of The Screenwriter (another of Cook's shy anti-heroes) in Hellzapoppin', 1941

Cook played a private detective in a 1953 episode of Adventures of Superman TV series entitled Semi-Private Eye. In the series DVD commentary, Jack Larson describes this as his favorite episode, both for being allowed to play a self-styled Humphrey Bogart-style Shamus, and for the chance to work with "Cookie", who became a good friend.

He played lawyer Samuel T. Cogley on in the Star Trek episode "Court Martial", and later had a long-term recurring role as Icepick on Magnum, P.I..

According to John Huston, who directed him in The Maltese Falcon, Cook “lived alone up in the High Sierra, tied flies and caught golden trout between films. When he was wanted in Hollywood, they sent word up to his mountain cabin by courier. He would come down, do a picture, and then withdraw again to his retreat.”

He was married at least twice, but had no children. He had been living in Bishop, California and died on May 18, 1995 in Big Pine, California. [3]

Director/Film

References

  1. ^ a b California Death Index
  2. ^ Social Security Death Index
  3. ^ a b c Robert Mcg. Thomas Jr. (May 21, 1995). "Elisha Cook Jr., Villain in Many Films, Dies at 91". New York Times. Elisha Cook Jr., whose intense, bug-eyed portrayal of Wilmer, the psychotic, baby-faced killer in "The Maltese Falcon," made him a cult figure to a generation of moviegoers, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Big Pine, California. He was 91. He was the last surviving cast member of John Huston's 1941 film noir classic, whose company included Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Mary Astor. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ 1900 US Census
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