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Character Actor Elisha Cook Jr.

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January 15, 2023, 11:12 AM
TMats
Character Actor Elisha Cook Jr.
I’m certain that no one is more familiar with Elisha Cook Jr than film noir devotee, para. He appeared in 21 films in that genre, more than any other actor. He was nicknamed, “Hollywood’s Lightest Heavy,” standing 5’5” and at the time he went into the Army, weighing only 123 pounds. He died in 1995.


The Maltese Falcon


The Big Sleep


The Killing

and finally, the film noir “heavy” meets a much bigger one.

I know that the streets of Grafton are much muddier than anywhere else. I also know that thunder rumbles in what appears to be a partly cloudy sky and the storm front never materializes, but the George Stevens scene oozes malevolence. Torrey slipping in the mud as Palance’s character, Jack Wilson, towers over him up on the boardwalk. Both were great


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despite them
January 15, 2023, 12:27 PM
YooperSigs
1930 to 1988 in both TV and movies. Amazing career!


End of Earth: 2 Miles
Upper Peninsula: 4 Miles
January 15, 2023, 01:32 PM
parabellum
Not just film noir, but proto-noir as well: I Wake Up Screaming and more significantly, Stranger on the Third Floor which is recognized as the starting point of the American classic film noir cycle of the 1940s and 50s.

Cook showed up in lots of films. One that comes to mind is the 1973 Electra Glide in Blue, and if you havent seen it, you are missing out. TV, all sorts of TV. Gunsmoke, Star Trek, you name it.

He's worked with Kubrick, Brando, Howard Hawks and on and on.

Hell, man, he was even in Blacula. Big Grin
January 16, 2023, 05:22 AM
Bulldog7972
Didn't he play Icepick in Magnum PI?
January 16, 2023, 06:44 AM
recoatlift
https://youtu.be/9S4JGcOVxrE
January 16, 2023, 04:58 PM
ZSMICHAEL
Don't bother Knockin starring Marilyn Monore. Plays her Uncle. Was just shown on TCM
January 16, 2023, 05:37 PM
oddball
The guy was in a lot of things. I remember him in several Perry Mason episodes, the Bogart films and The Killing. But also the real estate guy showing a Dakotas apartment to John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby.



"I’m not going to read Time Magazine, I’m not going to read Newsweek, I’m not going to read any of these magazines; I mean, because they have too much to lose by printing the truth"- Bob Dylan, 1965
January 16, 2023, 06:44 PM
Blume9mm
quote:
Originally posted by Bulldog7972:
Didn't he play Icepick in Magnum PI?


Yep, that was him....


My Native American Name:
"Runs with Scissors"
January 16, 2023, 07:07 PM
TMats
I actually looked for a film clip of Cook in Electra Glide in Blue, but couldn’t find one.


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despite them
January 17, 2023, 09:26 PM
CQB60
He was also in House on haunted hill. That movie gave me the creeps for years.


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Life is short. It’s shorter with the wrong gun…
January 22, 2023, 12:17 AM
83v45magna
Even great in bit parts:

'War nerves?' Who said, 'war nerves?'

'Well I heard it on that radio there.'