Under the Radar: Peter Cook

 

Well, here in the United States, Cook was mostly under the radar, but I hear tell in the British Isles he was pretty much a household name. His comedic career at times was intertwined with a man who did become a household name here in the United States:

All you Yanks out there, recognize the chap on the right? Foul Play? 10? Micky & Maude? ARTHUR?! That's right, it's Dudley Moore. If you'll recall, the Hollywood star originally hailed from England, and even had the accent to prove it. Cook and Moore had been members of a four-man satirical comedy stage revue titled Beyond the Fringe that premiered in 1960 and had successful runs in both the West End and on Broadway. The other two members were Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller. The four Englishmen acted in the skits that they themselves wrote. The revue's success led to an overall boom in British comedy, culminating in Monty Python's Flying Circus by decade's end. As for Cook and Moore, once the revue ran its course, they decided to continue on as a team. They had their own TV show on the BBC, put out a few comedy albums, appeared in more stage shows, and made a few movies, once of which I'll show a clip from in a bit. All of this did get them some attention on this side of the Atlantic. At least they got the attention of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, who had them cohost one night during that show's first season. And when American talk show host Dick Cavett did a series of shows from London, he had the two comics on as guests:

This clip is almost 50 years old. Even though William and Kate and Harry and Meghan have yet to arrive, the Queen that Cavett, Cook, and Moore refer to is the one that still sits on the throne today! 

Now I'm going to go back almost 60 years, and show you a very famous (in England) sketch of Cook's and Moore's written by Cook. It made its premier in the aforementioned Beyond the Fringe revue, and the two men revived it from time to time afterwards, even doing it on Saturday Night Live. I found the SNL clip on YouTube, but this isn't it. Here's hoping you don't mind the black-and-white imagery, because I want to show you the sketch as close to its stage debut as I can get it:

Cook and Moore may never have done a Tarzan movie, but in 1967 they came out with this Faustian farce:

12How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! 13For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit  

--Isaiah 14:12-15

Confused? Not sure what Isaiah is talking about? Cook (as the Devil) and Moore reenacts the above passage in this scene from Bedazzled: 

(Now, I'm sure some of you biblical scholar nitpickers out there are going to try and tell me that King James and his ghostwriters got it wrong, that it's a famous mistranslation from the Hebrew original, that Lucifer wasn't the Devil after all, but just some king in antiquity who was full of himself. Well, if you think I'm going to remove the above funny scene from this post for that reason--and, were he here, I'm sure John Milton would back me up on this--YOU deserve to be cut down to the ground!) 

OK, so far we've seen Cook with Moore, but how funny was he without him?

In 1981, Cook was lured to the U.S.--Dudley Moore's newfound success here had to have been on his mind--to appear in a situation comedy titled The Two of Us. Based on an earlier Britcom called Two's Company, the talented Mimi Kennedy plays Nan Gallagher, a local TV talk show host and single mother who needs someone to manage the household while she's at the studio. Despite some misgivings about working for Americans, haughty Englishman Robert Brentwood accepts the job (he probably figured, if it's good enough for Clifton Webb...) I remember finding the show very funny, and this 40-year-old clip (with subtitles, for anyone who happens to speak whatever language it is) doesn't disappoint. Along with Cook and Kennedy there's Dana Hill as Nan's 12-year-old daughter Gabby (in real life, Hill was 17, her growth unfortunately stunted by diabetes.) Watch:

                                             

As funny as the show was, and as funny as Cook was in it, The Two of Us only lasted two seasons. Cook hung around Hollywood for a while, doing small parts in movies (most notably, he was the clergyman in The Princess Bride), and then went back to England. Even on his home soil, Cook was unable to recapture his former success, and when he died in 1995 at age 57, the British press was hard on him for being unable to do so. That was then. It's now 26 years later. In the long run, careers aren't judged by how they end but by how well they did in, well, the long run. Peter Cook is increasingly seen as one of the greatest comic minds Britain has ever produced, and that island has produced a lot of great comic minds. Americans should take notice.