Although this pint-sized actor started out in films often in innocuous
college-student roles in mid-1930's 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 Warner's
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.
Magnum, P.I.(1980)as Francis 'Ice Pick' Hofstetler, Harold W. Farber, Wilmer
ALF(1986)as Uncle Albert
The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains(1987)as Pappy Glue
Simon & Simon(1981)as Bradley Bishop, Dutch Silver
The Fall Guy(1981)as Whitman the Counterfeiter
Peter Gunn(1958)
Tin Pan Alley(1940)
Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend(1986)as Eddie Forbes
The Moviemakers(1984)as Self
The Merv Griffin Show(1962)as Self
The Kraft Music Hall(1967)as Self
The Jackie Gleason Show(1952)as Self - as Lefty
Compression(1995)as Self
Cinemassacre's Monster Madness(2007)as Peter Smith, Micah Smith (as Elisha Cook)
Call the Usual Suspects: The Craft of the Character Actor(2006)as Self
Rosemary's Baby: A Retrospective(2000)
Freakazoid!(1995)