George Whitfield Cook III (April 9, 1909 – November 12, 2003) was anAmerican writer of screenplays, stage plays, short stories and novels, best known for his contributions to twoAlfred Hitchcock films,Stage Fright andStrangers on a Train. He also wrote scripts for several TV series, includingSuspense,Climax! andPlayhouse 90.^[1]

George Whitfield Cook III was born on April 9, 1909, inMontclair, 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 citedWalter de la Mare andVirginia Woolf as major influences.^[2] He attended and graduated from theYale School of Drama.

Cook began his career as a writer in the late thirties with stories inThe American Mercury,Story andCosmopolitan.^[3] One of these stories, "The Unfaithful," won anO. Henry Award in the "Best First-Published" category in 1943.^[4]

In the early forties, Cook wrote a series of stories forRedbook about a precocious teenage girl named Violet who helps to untangle her father's love life.^[5] In 1944 he dramatized these in a play calledViolet. The play, which Cook also directed, only ran onBroadway for 23 performances,^[6] but it starredPatricia Hitchcock as Violet, and brought Cook to the attention of her father,Alfred Hitchcock.^[3]

In 1945, Cook headed to Hollywood, where he was partnered with Ann Morrison Chapin on a trio of film scripts that starredJune Allyson. He made his debut with the romantic comedyThe Sailor Takes a Wife (1945) and followed with the psychological dramaThe Secret Heart (1946) and the wartime romanceHigh Barbaree (1947).^[2]

Cook then worked with Hitchcock and his wife,Alma Reville, onStage Fright (1950) andStrangers on a Train (1951). Cook's treatment forStrangers 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.^[7]

For his work onStage Fright, Cook was nominated for a 1951Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Motion Picture category.^[8]

For the remainder of the 1950s, Cook worked in television, contributing scripts to series such asStudio One in Hollywood,Suspense,Front Row Center,Playhouse 90,Colgate Theatre,Climax!,Have Gun – Will Travel and77 Sunset Strip.^[1]

Cook wrote four books:

• Violet, 1942, a collection of theRedbook stories^[9]
• Roman Comedy: An Impolite Extravaganza (published in paperback asA Night with Mr. Primrose), 1951, a novel about a film star who travels to Italy to make a movie^[9]
• Taxi to Dubrovnik, 1981, a novel about three idle, vacationing Americans traveling by hired car fromAthens toDubrovnik.^[10]
• A Choice of Disguises, 2003, a novel^[11]

In the 2012 filmHitchcock, Cook was portrayed byDanny Huston as a charmer trying to persuade Hitchcock's wife,Alma Reville, into having an extra-marital affair during the filming ofPsycho.^[12] Several published Hitchcock biographies document this as accurate from Cook's private diaries.

New Dramatists annually bestows a Whitfield Cook Award to a playwright for the best unproduced, unpublished play, as determined by a jury.^[13]

• Whitfield Cook atIMDb
• Whitfield Cook at theInternet Broadway Database

• 1909 births
• 2003 deaths
• 20th-century American novelists
• American male screenwriters
• American male novelists
• David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University alumni
• Novelists from New Jersey
• Writers from Montclair, New Jersey
• American male short story writers
• 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
• American male dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American short story writers
• 20th-century American male writers
• Screenwriters from New Jersey
• 20th-century American screenwriters

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