Clyde Cook

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Clyde Cook in a 1920 movie magazine

Clyde Wilford Cook (born December 16, 1891 in Port Macquarie , New South Wales , † August 13, 1984 in Carpinteria , California , USA ) was an Australian actor, comedian, film director and writer.

life and career

Clyde Cook was born in Australia in 1891 as the son of a train driver. He was on stage for the first time at the age of six. His particularly elastic movements earned him the nicknames Rubber Comedian ("rubber comedian") and Kangaroo Boy ("kangaroo boy"). Cook toured Australia with the JC Williamson theater company, among others, and appeared at the Folies Bergère in Paris and the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway in New York City . Meanwhile, Cook also served for the Royal Navy in the First World War . Through his appearances at the New York Hippodrome, Cook became a star comedian in the late 1910s. Here he was discovered by agents of the Fox Film Corporation , who signed him to Hollywood.

Clyde Cook made his film debut in 1919 with a small role in Soldiers of Fortune . In the 1920s he became the leading actor in many short film comedies, with his acrobatic movements and distinctive mustache also becoming his trademark on the screen. Although he was considered amusing, Cook lacked a convincing screen character, which is why he could never rise to the top ranks of silent film comedians. In 1925 he worked regularly for the comedy producer Hal Roach , where Cook reached the peak of his career. In the 1926 short film comedy Wandering Papas , directed by Stan Laurel, he played a sappy cook, while Oliver Hardy played a supporting role as Cook's strict foreman. He also played the Comic Relief in several full-length feature films for Warner Brothers , including alongside William Demarest and Louise Fazenda .

In the late 1920s, the sound film the silent film replaced, Cook managed the change initially very good. He played substantial supporting roles in feature films such as Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York (1928), the Shakespeare film The Taming of the Shrew (1929) and the detective film Start into the Twilight (1930). Between 1932 and 1933 Cook was one of the main characters in Hal Roach's film series "Taxi Boys". From the end of the 1930s, his film appearances became increasingly smaller, as silent film comedians like him were no longer in demand. In some films such as The Lord of the Seven Seas (1940), where he played a comical pirate next to Errol Flynn , or the drama Mutterherz (1946), he was given some noteworthy roles. Cook said goodbye to the big screen in 1963 with a small supporting role as an Australian officer in the John Wayne film Die Hafenkneipe von Tahiti .

In total, Cook played in around 140 films; he had also tried to direct four short films between 1924 and 1934. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his film work . Clyde Cook, who was married twice with one child, died in California in 1984 at the age of 92.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Clyde Cook's biography on the Internet Movie Database
  2. ↑ Clyde Cook at SilentHollywood
  3. ↑ Clyde Cook at Allmovie  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / abemesef.com  
  4. ↑ "The Taxi Boys" at Lordheath ( memento of the original from August 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lordheath.com
personal data
SURNAME Cook, Clyde
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cook, Clyde Wilford (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian actor, comedian, film director and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Port Macquarie , New South Wales
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1984
Place of death Carpinteria , California , USA