Whitfield Cook

George Whitfield Cook III was born on April 9, 1909, in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of engineer George Whitfield Cook Jr., and his wife, the former Hortense Heyse. He began writing short stories as a child and later cited Walter de la Mare and Virginia Woolf as major influences.{{cite web | url=http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/collections/collection?id=121798 | title=Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center | accessdate=2013-05-27}} He attended and graduated from the Yale School of Drama.

Cook began his career as a writer in the late thirties with stories in The American Mercury, Story and Cosmopolitan.{{cite book|last=Mcgilligan|first=Patrick|title=Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light|year=2012|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0060988272|page=364}} One of these stories, "The Unfaithful," won an O. Henry Award in the "Best First-Published" category in 1943.{{cite web | url=http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/ohenry/0999/winnerslist.html | title=Bold Type: O. Henry Award Winners 1919-1999 | accessdate=2013-05-27}}

In the early forties, Cook wrote a series of stories for Redbook about a precocious teenage girl named Violet who helps to untangle her father's love life.{{cite web | url=http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/d665.htm#A22569 | title=Chronological List | accessdate=2013-05-27}} In 1944 he dramatized these in a play called Violet. The play, which Cook also directed, only ran on Broadway for 23 performances,{{cite web | url=http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/10855/Violet | title=Violet on Broadway - Information, Cast, Crew, Synopsis and Photos - Playbill Vault | accessdate=2013-05-27}} but it starred Patricia Hitchcock as Violet, and brought Cook to the attention of her father, Alfred Hitchcock.

In 1945, Cook headed to Hollywood, where he was partnered with Ann Morrison Chapin on a trio of film scripts that starred June Allyson. He made his debut with the romantic comedy The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945) and followed with the psychological drama The Secret Heart (1946) and the wartime romance High Barbaree (1947).

Cook then worked with Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, on Stage Fright (1950) and Strangers on a Train (1951). Cook's treatment for Strangers on a Train is usually given credit for heightening the film's homoerotic subtext (only hinted at in the novel) and the softening of the villain, Bruno, from the coarse alcoholic of the book into a dapper, charming mama's boy.McGilligan, p. 442

For his work on Stage Fright, Cook was nominated for a 1951 Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Motion Picture category.{{cite web | url=http://www.theedgars.com/edgarsDB/index.php | title=Edgar Award Winners and Nominees Database | accessdate=2013-05-26}}

For the remainder of the 1950s, Cook worked in television, contributing scripts to series such as Studio One in Hollywood, Suspense, Front Row Center, Playhouse 90, Colgate Theatre, Climax!, Have Gun – Will Travel and 77 Sunset Strip.

Cook wrote four books:

• Violet, 1942, a collection of the Redbook stories{{cite web | url=http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/whitfield-cook/ | title=whitfield cook - AbeBooks | accessdate=2013-05-27}}
• Roman Comedy: An Impolite Extravaganza (published in paperback as A Night with Mr. Primrose), 1951, a novel about a film star who travels to Italy to make a movie
• Taxi to Dubrovnik, 1981, a novel about three idle, vacationing Americans traveling by hired car from Athens to Dubrovnik.{{cite web | url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/whitfield-cook/taxi-to-dubrovnik/ | title=TAXI TO DUBROVNIK by Whitfield Cook | publisher=Kirkus | accessdate=2013-05-27}}
• A Choice of Disguises, 2003, a novel{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fawlAAAACAAJ | title=A Choice of Disguises: A Novel - Whitfield Cook - Google Books | isbn=9781567150780 | accessdate=2013-05-27| last1=Cook | first1=Whitfield | year=2003 | publisher=CfP Press }}

In the 2012 film Hitchcock, Cook was portrayed by Danny Huston as a charmer trying to persuade Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, into having an extra-marital affair during the filming of Psycho.{{cite web | url=http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/11/14/hitchcock-review | title=Hitchcock Review - IGN | date=2012-11-14 | accessdate=2013-05-26 | author=Vejvoda, Jim}} Several published Hitchcock biographies document this as accurate from Cook's private diaries.

The New Dramatists of New York City annually bestow a Whitfield Cook Award on a playwright for the best unproduced, unpublished play, as determined by a jury.{{cite web | url=http://newdramatists.org/content/178609112011 | title=Whitfield Cook Award | accessdate=2013-05-26}}

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Category:1909 births

Category:2003 deaths

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:American male screenwriters

Category:American male novelists

Category:David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni

Category:Novelists from New Jersey

Category:Writers from Montclair, New Jersey

Category:American male short story writers

Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights

Category:American male dramatists and playwrights

Category:20th-century American short story writers

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:Screenwriters from New Jersey

Category:20th-century American screenwriters