Caroline Frances Cooke

(b. Chicago, Illinois, 29/12/1875 – d. Los Angeles, 08/07/1962). American actress. Caroline Frances Cooke (usually credited as Caroline Cooke) was a stage and screen actress. With a German-born father and a Swedish-born mother, it is likely that Cooke was not the family’s original surname, but that is how she appears in the 1900 Census – as a single actress living in New York. However, at some stage she married actor/director Lorimer Johnston and before they turned to movies, the couple toured the vaudeville circuit performing comedy sketches from New Orleans to San Francisco. When Johnston started directing, first for the Selig Polyscope Company in Chicago and then for the American Film Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, Cooke moved with him and acted in many of the shorts made by her husband.

When he was engaged by I.W. Schlesinger to launch African Film Productions, she accompanied him to South Africa. They arrived in Cape Town in November 1915 and she subsequently acted in seven films produced by the company, four of them directed by Johnston: A Story of the Rand (for which she also provided the original story), The Splendid Waster, Gloria and Sonny’s Little Bit, all in 1916. In addition she appeared in A Zulu’s Devotion (Joseph Albrecht/1916), The Water Cure (B.F. Clinton/1916) and De Voortrekkers (Harold M. Shaw/1916). In fact, just prior to coming out to South Africa she had acted with Clinton in a short entitled The Light in a Woman’s Eyes (1915), on which Johnston had been associate producer. The couple returned to the United States via the Far East. In 1926 they both appeared in The Bells (James Young/1926), with Lionel Barrymore, but she seems to have dropped out of acting until 1939-1944, when she appeared in a number of uncredited roles for Universal Pictures. She died in 1962 and is buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. (FO)

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