page_title: Peter Cook
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: Peter Cook / Career / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: Photo of comedian Peter Cook in the revue Beyond the Fringe. The revue was first performed in the UK; the original cast came to Broadway with it from 1962 to 1964.
context_page_description: Peter Edward Cook was an English satirist and comedic actor. He was a leading figure of the British satire boom of the 1960s, and he was associated with the anti-establishment comedic movement that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
  Born in Torquay, he was educated at the University of Cambridge. There he became involved with the Footlights Club, of which he later became president. After graduating he created the comedy stage revue Beyond the Fringe, beginning a long-running partnership with Dudley Moore. In 1961, Cook opened the comedy club The Establishment in Soho, Central London. In 1965, Cook and Moore began a television career, beginning with Not Only... But Also. Following the success of the show, the duo appeared together in films The Wrong Box and Bedazzled. Cook and Moore returned to television projects continuing to the late 1970s, including co-presenting Saturday Night Live in the United States. From 1978 until his death in 1995, Cook no longer collaborated with Moore but continued to be a regular performer in British television and film.
context_section_description: In 1961, Cook opened The Establishment, a club at 18 Greek Street in Soho in central London, presenting fellow comedians in a nightclub setting, including American Lenny Bruce. Cook said it was a satirical venue modelled on "those wonderful Berlin cabarets ... which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War"; as a members-only venue, it was outside the censorship restrictions. The Establishment's regular cabaret performers were Eleanor Bron, John Bird, and John Fortune. 
  Cook befriended and supported Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, who began his British solo career at the club. Humphries said in his autobiography, My Life As Me, that he found Cook's lack of interest in art and literature off-putting. Dudley Moore's jazz trio played in the basement of the club during the early 1960s.
  Cook also opened an Establishment club in New York in 1963 and Lenny Bruce performed there, as well.
  In 1962, the BBC commissioned a pilot for a television series of satirical sketches based on the Establishment Club, but it was not immediately picked up and Cook went to New York City for a year to perform Beyond the Fringe on Broadway. When he returned, the pilot had been refashioned as That Was the Week That Was and had made a star of David Frost, something Cook resented.
  The 1960s satire boom was coming to an end and Cook said: "England was about to sink giggling into the sea." He complained that Frost's success was based on copying Cook's own stage persona and Cook dubbed him "the bubonic plagiarist", and said that his only regret in life, according to Alan Bennett, had been saving Frost from drowning. This incident occurred in the summer of 1963, when the rivalry between the two men was at its height. Cook had realised that Frost's potential drowning would have looked deliberate if he had not been rescued.
  Around this time, Cook provided financial backing for the satirical magazine Private Eye, supporting it through difficult periods, particularly in libel trials. Cook invested his own money and solicited investment from his friends. For a time, the magazine was produced from the premises of the Establishment Club. In 1963, Cook married Wendy Snowden; the couple had two daughters, Lucy and Daisy, but the marriage ended in 1970.
  Cook's first regular television spot was on Granada Television's Braden Beat with Bernard Braden, where he featured his most enduring character: the static, dour and monotonal E. L. Wisty, whom Cook had conceived for Radley College's Marionette Society.
  Cook's comedy partnership with Dudley Moore led to Not Only... But Also. This was originally intended by the BBC as a vehicle for Moore's music, but Moore invited Cook to write sketches and appear with him. Using few props, they created dry, absurd television that proved hugely popular and lasted for three series between 1965 and 1970. Cook played characters such as Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling and the two men created their Pete and Dud alter egos. Other sketches included "Superthunderstingcar", a parody of the Gerry Anderson marionette TV shows, and Cook's pastiche of 1960s trendy arts documentaries – satirised in a parodic segment on Greta Garbo.
  When Cook learned a few years later that the videotapes of the series were to be wiped, a common practice at the time, he offered to buy the recordings from the BBC but was refused because of copyright issues. He suggested he could purchase new tapes so that the BBC would have no need to erase the originals, but this was also turned down. Of the original 22 programmes, only eight still survive complete. A compilation of six half-hour programmes, The Best of... What's Left of... Not Only...But Also was shown on television and has been released on both VHS and DVD.
  With The Wrong Box (1966) and Bedazzled (1967), Cook and Moore began to act in films together. Directed by Stanley Donen, the underlying story of Bedazzled is credited to Cook and Moore and its screenplay to Cook. A comic parody of Faust, it stars Cook as George Spigott (the Devil) who tempts Stanley Mo
caption: Cook in the revue Beyond the Fringe
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