Wally Cox

Wallace Maynard Cox was born on December 6, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, where he completed his secondary education at Denby High School. At age ten, he relocated with his divorced mother, mystery author Eleanor Blake, and his younger sister to Evanston, Illinois, where he formed a close friendship with a neighbor named Marlon Brando. The family moved several more times, including a period in New York City, before settling back in Detroit.

During World War II, Cox returned to New York City and enrolled at the City College of New York. He served briefly in the United States Army, spending four months in service that included basic training at Camp Wolters, Texas. After leaving the Army, he attended New York University while supporting his mother and sister by operating a small jewelry-making shop. He simultaneously developed a comedy act, performing monologues at private parties that led to nightclub engagements, including a residency at the Village Vanguard beginning in December 1948. Brando, who became his roommate during this period, encouraged Cox to study acting with Stella Adler.

In 1949, Cox appeared on the CBS radio program Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, performing a two-part act that opened with a slangy monologue about a reckless acquaintance named Dufo and pivoted into a high-pitched rendition of "The Drunkard Song," punctuated by eccentric yodeling. Though he lost the competition by a narrow margin to The Chordettes, the performance was strong enough to earn him a recording contract with RCA Victor, which released the "Dufo" routine paired with "Tavern in the Town" as a single. Billboard magazine tracked his rapid rise in booking fees during this era: from $75 per week at the Village Vanguard in the late 1940s, to $125 per week at the Blue Angel, to $250 per week when he appeared in the Broadway revue Dance Me a Song in 1950, and eventually $500 per week at the Persian Room.

Cox's Broadway career spanned from 1950 to 1959 and included the revue Dance Me a Song as well as the comedy Moonbirds. Between 1949 and 1951, he also worked in nightclubs and early television comedy-variety programs, among them the short-lived DuMont series The School House and CBS Television's Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town. A 1951 appearance on the Goodyear Television Playhouse, in which he starred as a policeman in the comedy episode "The Copper," brought him to the attention of producer Fred Coe, who cast him in the lead role of the proposed NBC sitcom Mister Peepers. The series ran from 1952 to 1955 and became a defining credit of Cox's career. The eight-year contract he signed with NBC in late 1952 paid him $100,000 for the year 1953 alone.

In 1953, Cox contributed four comedy sketches to The Ford 50th Anniversary Show, a program broadcast simultaneously on NBC and CBS that drew an audience of 60 million viewers. The sketches depicted, respectively, a man attempting to improve his physique, an expert on relaxation, a man learning to become socially confident, and a man taking dance lessons. Television critic Tom Shales later described the broadcast as both a landmark in television and a milestone in the cultural life of the 1950s.

Cox's screen and television work extended well beyond Mister Peepers. He played the title character in The Adventures of Hiram Holliday, based on short stories by Paul Gallico. In 1959, he guest-starred as Vincent Eaglewood on NBC's Western series Wagon Train. His film roles included Preacher Goodman in Spencer's Mountain (1963), a Navy sonar operator in The Bedford Incident (1964), and a drug-addicted doctor opposite Marlon Brando in the World War II suspense film Morituri (1965). He also appeared in a supporting capacity in 20th Century Fox's unfinished production Something's Got to Give (1962), Marilyn Monroe's final film. In total, Cox appeared in more than twenty motion pictures. He starred opposite Julie Newmar in Up Your Teddy Bear (1970) and was cast as a down-on-his-luck prospector in an episode of the Western comedy series Alias Smith and Jones.

His television guest appearances were extensive and included The Beverly Hillbillies, Lost in Space, I Spy, Here's Lucy, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Twilight Zone, and the pilot episodes of both Mission: Impossible and It Takes a Thief. He was a regular presence in the upper left square on the game show Hollywood Squares and also appeared on What's My Line? Cox provided the voice of the animated canine superhero Underdog for the Underdog television series, one of his most widely recognized contributions to popular culture.

As a writer, Cox authored several books. Mister Peepers: A Sort of Novel, co-written with William Redfield, was adapted from scripts of the television series. My Life as a Small Boy offered an idealized account of his childhood. Ralph Makes Good presented a parody and update of Horatio Alger and was likely originally conceived as a screen treatment for an unmade film. He also wrote the children's book The Tenth Life of Osiris Oakes.

Cox married three times, to Marilyn Gennaro, Milagros Tirado, and Patricia Tiernan, and was survived by his third wife and two children. His friendship with Marlon Brando, which began in childhood in Evanston, lasted throughout his life. Brando appeared unannounced at Cox's wake and was reported to have kept Cox's ashes in his bedroom. Brando told a journalist that had Cox been a woman, he would have married him, and writer-editor Beauregard Houston-Montgomery reported that Brando described Cox as the love of his life.

Cox was found dead on February 15, 1973, at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 48 years old. An autopsy determined the cause of death to be a heart attack.