Elisha Cook Jr was born on 26 December 1903.

He is an iconic psychotronic actor. He was short and slender. As a result, he was initially typecast as a nice and smart fellow. One of his first roles was as “member of the glee club.” You get the idea!

He played the gunsel Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon. That changed everything. It was supposedly his favorite film. I don’t especially like him in it. I want to like him. But it shows that he’s a good actor. I hate him in the film.

I much prefer him in The Big Sleep where he plays Harry Jones — pretty much the same character as Wilmer but with a good heart. He ends up dead. But that was generally true of his characters during this period.

Elisha Cook Jr was in far too many notable films and TV shows to do justice in this short post. So let me mention just a few. He plays another meek guy abused by his lover in The Killing. He plays similar roles in Phantom Lady and Born to Kill.

In Shane, he plays an angry homesteader who is killed by Jack Palance. But like many actors, he then turned mostly to television. And you see him everywhere! There aren’t many major shows that he didn’t appear on. Most notable to me is The Night Stalker.

But he still worked a lot in feature films. Of note to horror fans, he starred in Rosemary’s Baby, Blacula, and (the reason we are all here today) House on Haunted Hill. So let’s watch it now. I never get tired of it!

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Elisha Cook Jr via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.