Elisha Cook, Jr. (December 26, 1906 - May 18, 1995)

Character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. was the son of an influential theatrical actor/writer/producer who died early in the 20th Century. The younger Cook was in vaudeville and stock by the time he was fourteen-years old. In 1928, Cook enjoyed critical praise for his performance in the play "Her Unborn Child", a performance he would repeat for his film debut in the 1930 film version of the play. The first ten years of Cook's Hollywood career found the slight, baby-faced actor playing innumerable college intellectuals and hapless freshmen, such as 1936's "Pigskin Parade". In 1940, Cook was cast as a man wrongly convicted of murder in "Stranger on the Third Floor" and so was launched the second phase of Cook's career as the helpless victim. The actor's ability to play beyond this stereotype was first tapped by director John Huston, who cast Cook as Wilmer, the hair-trigger homicidal killer in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). Sometimes he'd be shot full of holes (as in the closing gag of 1941's "Hellzapoppin'"), sometimes he'd fall victim to some other grisly demise (poison in "The Big Sleep" in 1946), and sometimes he'd be the squirrelly little guy who turned out to be the last-reel murderer as in I Wake Up Screaming [1941]. Seemingly born to play film noir characters, Cook had one of his best extended moments in "Phantom Lady" (1944), wherein he plays a set of drums with ever-increasing orgiastic fervor. Another career high point was his death scene in "Shane" (1953); Cook is shot down by hired gun Jack Palance and plummets to the ground like a dead rabbit. A near-hermit in real life who lived in a remote mountain home and had to receive his studio calls by courier, Cook nonetheless never wanted for work, even late in life. In the 1980s, Cook had a recurring role as the snarling elderly mobster Ice Pick in "Magnum P.I." Elisha Cook, Jr. died of a stroke on May 18, 1995, at age 88 in Big Pine, California.