| Wally Cox |
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Information AboutWally Cox |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WALLY COX | |
| 1924 births | |
| cox, wally | |
| 1973 deaths | |
| american television actors | |
| american voice actors | |
| people from detroit | |
| people from evanston, illinois | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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He was born in Detroit, Michigan . He moved with his divorced mother, mystery author Eleanor Atkinson, and a younger sister to Evanston, Illinois , when he was about 10, where he met and became close friends with another neighborhood child, Marlon Brando . During the war years he and his family moved to New York , where Cox attended CCNY and New York University . He supported his invalid mother and sister by making and selling jewelry at parties, and started doing comedy monologues for the guests, which were well-received enough to lead to regular performances at nightclubs such as the Village Vanguard , beginning in December of 1948. At one point, he became the roommate of his boyhood friend . Cox and Brando remained very close friends for the rest of Cox's life, and Brando is reported {Link without Title} to have kept Cox's ashes in his bedroom and conversed with them nightly, until his own death. Cox appeared in Broadway musical reviews, night clubs, and early TV comedy-variety programs in the period 1949 - 1951 , creating a huge impact with a starring role as a well-meaning but ineffective policeman on Philco Television Playhouse in 1951 . Producer Fred Coe approached Cox about a starring role in a proposed live TV sitcom, '' Mr. Peepers '', and the rest is history. ''Peepers'' ran on NBC for three years and made Cox a household name in the US. His best-known roles, apart from mild-mannered teacher ''Robinson Peepers'' of the television Sitcom '' Mr. Peepers '' ( 1952 - 1955 ), were as the eponymous hero of '' The Adventures Of Hiram Holliday '' ( 1956 - 1957 ); regular panelist on the television game show '' Hollywood Squares '' ( 1966 - 1973 ); and voice of the animated cartoon character '' Underdog '' ( 1964 - ). He played character roles in over twenty motion pictures, and worked frequently in guest-star roles in a large number of TV drama, comedy and variety series in the 1960s and early 1970s. His television and screen persona was that of a shy, timid but kind man who wore thick eyeglasses and spoke in a tentative, high-pitched voice. Cox protested in vain to reporters over the years that he was nothing like Peepers; he was physically quite strong, hiked and rode a motorcycle, and especially in his later years sometimes displayed an unpleasantly sarcastic and peevish personality. Cox died of a heart attack apparently brought on by a sleeping pill overdose, in Los Angeles at the age of 48. Eventually his ashes were mingled with those of Brando and another friend and scattered in Death Valley , California. EXTERNAL LINKS
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