Elisha Cook Jr.(1903-1995)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Although this pint-sized actor started out in films often in innocuous
college-student roles in mid-30s rah-rahs, playing alongside the likes
of a pretty Gloria Stuart or a young, pre-"Oz" Judy Garland, casting directors
would soon enough discover his flair for portraying intense neurotics
or spineless double-dealers. Thus was he graduated from the innocuous
to the noxious. In Warners' They Won't Forget (1937), for example, he plays the role of
a student whose social engagement with a young Lana Turner, debuting here
in a featured role, seems to have been broken by her whereas, possibly
unbeknownst to him, she has quite mysteriously been murdered. Cook
becomes so enraged, venting such venom, that the movie audience can
only look upon him as a prime suspect in Lana's demise. In Universal's
Phantom Lady (1944), he portrays a nightclub-orchestra drummer who, under the
intoxicating influence of some substance or other, encounters Ella Raines
during an afternoon's band practice. Thoroughly taken with her slinky
allure, he enacts a drum-solo piece that is of such crescendo, and
played with such innuendo, as to suggest - glaringly - nothing except
his own fantasized sexual journey from cymbal foreplay through
bass-drum climax.
