Alistair Cooke (1908-2004) was known to millions as the graceful, amazingly well-read host of MASTERPIECE THEATRE for 22 years. But this very public side of a very outgoing man was just the tip of the iceberg to a fascinating career extending back to the Jazz Age.
Cooke, who died in 2004 at age 95, was a polymath, reporter, critic, amateur jazz pianist and tireless explorer of the culture of the United States, where the English-born son of an iron fitter became a citizen in 1941.
“The Unseen Alistair Cooke” includes footage from 150 reels of film shot by Cooke from the 1930s on, recording his encounters with American scenes and celebrities. Discovered after his death, the treasure trove includes a short feature of his friends Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard in an exuberant playlet filmed aboard Chaplin’s yacht. Chaplin had promised to be best man at Cooke’s wedding in 1934, but missed the nuptials.
Outside the United States, Cooke is best known as the insightful correspondent on the worldwide BBC radio broadcast, “Letter from America,” which aired weekly from 1946 until a month before Cooke’s death. Anecdotal and slyly witty, the series had the feel of an old friend reporting the incidents and observations of an eventful life. At times Cooke dwelt on the tragic, as in his account of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, which he witnessed from only a few yards away.
Interviewed in the program are his personal friend Lauren Bacall, MASTERPIECE executive producer Rebecca Eaton and members of Cooke’s family, who recount what it was like living with this flamboyant, if sometimes neglectful, father and husband. “He was the perfect person for the job because he could speak with such knowledge about literature and history,” says. Eaton. “And since he lived in this country, he knew what Americans needed to know about British society and the finer points of the class system.”
”I suspect that over the years people tuned into MASTERPIECE THEATRE as much to see him and hear what he had to say as to watch the programs,” she adds. “He became like a rock star.”
See previews and find out more at pbs.org
Watch it Sunday, November 23rd 8 pm PBS-HD
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