Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Elisha Cook Jr." in English language version.
Elisha Cook Jr., whose intense, bug-eyed portrayal of Wilmer, the baby-faced killer in The Maltese Falcon, made him a cult figure to a generation of moviegoers, died on Thursday at a nursing home in Big Pine, California. 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. [...] A native of San Francisco who grew up in Chicago, Mr. Cook was a traveling actor in the East and Midwest before going to New York, where Eugene O'Neill picked him to play the juvenile lead in "Ah Wilderness!," which ran on Broadway for two years.
'My mother was an actress out here,' he begins, 'by the name of Helen Henry. When I was 3 we left San Francisco to move to Chicago. That was two weeks before the quake, so I say I'm here on a rain check. Anyway, when I was growing up, Frank Bacon came to Chicago in Lightnin', at the Blackstone. He said, 'Want to go onstage, kid?' So he got me in by selling programs and doing walk-ons. I did pretty good, so later he says to me, 'Want to go to New York?' He was quite a guy, Mr. Bacon was. When he died in Chicago, his wife calls me up and says, 'He doesn't like to be alone,' so I went out and sat with his body for three days.
