)Here is some trivia and quotes from the very respected Mr. Cooke:
His "Letter From America" radio broadcast to the UK (and the world via the BBC World Service) ran from 1946-2004 making it the world's longest running speech radio show (58 years).
Became a U.S. Citizen in 1941.
He retired at the age of 95 years in 2004 due to failing health.
A naturalised US citizen, he was awarded an honorary knighthood in 1973.
His "Letter from America" began its thirteen week run on 24 March 1946. It ended after 2869 letters in March 2004, weeks before Cooke's death.
Cooke worked as a personal assistant to Charlie Chaplin (the Little Tramp) on a projected film about the life of Napoleon. Chaplin had been invited to be Best Man at Cooke's wedding to Ruth Emerson, but the bride's mother objected to the film star's living in sin with actress Paulette Goddard.
His first wife Ruth Emerson was an American model and a niece of Ralph Waldo. They had one son John (1941), who was, until her death, Janis Joplin's manager, and now writes westerns.
His second wife, Jane Hawkes White, was a war widow and a daughter of a New Jersey Senator. She was a painter by trade with two children Holly & Stephen. Alistair and Jane had one daughter Susie, born in 1949.
A memorial service was held for him at London's Westminster Abbey on 15th October 2004.
Shortly after his death it was discovered that some of his bones had been removed before his body was passed to his family for cremation. Police investigating an illegal trade in bones, used for transplants and sold for thousands of dollars, found that his body was one of many which had been desecrated in the mortuary. His ashes were scattered in New York's Central Park.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 95-97. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
Father of Susan Cooke Kittredge from his marriage to Jane White Hawkes.
Personal Quotes
"People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back."
"In America the race is on between its decadence and its vitality, and it has plenty of both."
"Canned music is like audible wallpaper."
"I'm still an Englishman in America. An Irish Lancastrian, really. I don't kid myself that I'm from Arkansas."
"As always, the British shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then embrace it with enthusiasm two years later."
[on Mary Pickford] She was the girl every young man wanted to have -- as his sister.
[on Douglas Fairbanks] Fairbanks' glory, the mystery of his visual imagination, is that he could throw away all the text book tricks on the makeshift apparatus of ordinary life. To Fairbanks the limb of a tree suggests a hocks-off; a narrow lane with high walls is a risky, but workable, set of parallel bars; a spear is a pole to vault with.
[on Greta Garbo] Every man's harmless fantasy mistress. She gave you the impression that, if your imagination had to sin, it could at least congratulate itself on its impeccable taste.
