Kind words for Wilmer
He could be a loudmouth bullying the air around him, like Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon (41, John Huston), and he could be a quiet, gutsy squirt, like Henry Jones in The Big Sleep (46, Howard Hawks). It wasn't a big adjustment, going from one to the other; and maybe it wasn't a huge range. But Elisha Cook was guaranteed. Put him in a bad picture, and he made it watchable for ten minutes. Put him in something good and he was a metaphor for glue, or the medium itself. He could make you trust a film.
David Thomson, New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2004 ed.
(link to updated edition)
posted by The Other Front at 4:11 PM
3 Comments:
I remember him as Samuel T. Cogley, Captain Kirk's lawyer in the episode Court Martial.
Cogley: Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn't so important, I'd show you something. My library. Thousands of books.
Captain Kirk: And what would be the point?
Cogley: This is where the law is. Not in that homogenized, pasteurized synthesizer. Do you want to know the law? The ancient concepts in their own language? Learn the intent of the men who wrote them, from Moses to the tribunal of Alpha III? Books.
Captain Kirk: You have to be either an obsessive crackpot who's escaped from his keeper, or Samuel T. Cogley, attorney at law.
Cogley: You're right on both counts. Need a lawyer?
Captain Kirk: I'm afraid so.
Damn, that's good.
Q: Who wrote that?
A: Here.
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