Elisha Cook Jr., whose intense, bug-eyed portrayal of Wilmer, the psychotic, baby-faced killer in "The Maltese Falcon," made him a cult figure to a generation of moviegoers, died Thursday at a nursing home in Big Pine, Calif. He was 91.
He was the last surviving cast member of John Huston's 1941 film noir classic, whose company included Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Mary Astor.Cook had been disabled since suffering a stroke five years ago. He made an appearance just three weeks ago in San Francisco, where the movie and the Dashiell Hammett novel had been set.
Cook, who made more than 100 movies, once said that he had appeared in more "B-for-bomb turkeys" than any other actor. Maybe so, but few actors could claim to have played as many memorable roles in as many recognized classics or to have become the answer to so many Hollywood trivia questions.
He was the "hophead jazz drummer" in "Phantom Lady" (1944). He was Jonesy, the lovesick loser forced to drink poison in "The Big Sleep" (1946). He was the satanic apartment manager in "Rosemary's Baby" (1968). He was the wife-bedeviled race-track teller in Stanley Kubrick's first commercial feature, "The Killing" (1956). And he was the homesteader who took an unforgettable dying fall into the mud after being shot by Jack Palance in "Shane" (1953).
But to dedicated fans who never leave the theater until the last credit has rolled, none were as memorable as his role as "Wilmer the gunsel," Sydney Greenstreet's bodyguard in "The Maltese Falcon," in part, perhaps, because much of the dialogue was lifted directly from the Hammett novel.
"Keep on riding me," Cook tells Humphrey Bogart at one point. "They're gonna be pickin' iron out of your liver."
Cook, who portrayed so many low-life characters with such conviction that "Elisha Cook-like" became a catch phrase among casting directors and movie reviewers, liked to point out that he got the part of Wilmer simply because he had the same agent as Huston and Bogart.
"I played rats, pimps, informers, hopheads and communists," he once said, recalling that as a character actor generally assigned to subsidiary roles, he had to take what was offered.
"I didn't have the privilege of reading scripts. Guys called me up and said, `You're going to work tomorrow.' "
A native of San Francisco who grew up in Chicago, Cook was married at least twice, but according to the nursing home where he died, Cook left no immediate survivors.