Dancer, comedian, acrobat, film actor.
Born in the village of Hamilton, near Port Macquarie on the mid-North Coast of New South Wales, Clyde Cook first appeared on the professional stage as a seven year old and went on to carve out a career on the international stage as both a vaudeville performer and a star of the early Hollywood film industry. Associated in Australia mostly with
J.C. Williamson's Ltd, Cook featured as a juvenile in a number of the Firm's most successful pantomimes, and while still a teenager also cemented his reputation as one of the country's most talented acrobatic dancers on the Tivoli circuit.
In 1911 Cook travelled to the United Kingdom and initially worked for several years at the Empire Theatre, Finsbury Park while also touring the UK variety circuits. After playing a 14 weeks season at the Follies Bergeres in Paris he began a three years engagement in revue at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Cook returned to Australia in 1916 and renewed his association with Williamson's through a series of musical comedies and revues, but in 1919 left Australia to become an 'overnight success' at the New York Hippodrome.
Within a year of arriving in the USA Cook was discovered by Fox Studios who contracted him to star in a series of 'Clyde Cook' comedies, and through which he rivalled Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of Hollywood's most popular film comics of the era. In all Cook appeared in more than 130 films, beginning with
Kiss Me Quick (1921) and ending with
Donovan's Reef (opposite John Wayne) in 1963.
Cook died of arteriosclerotic cardio vascular disease at his home in the seaside city of Carpinteria, Santa Barbara County.
[Source:
Australian Variety Theatre Archive]
