Radio stars (Oct 1935-Sept 1936)

h/Uai's Belaud Joe took ? Joe-can laugh away every hardship he has known— except one TWO little boys gazed at their father in his coffin. Holy candles, casting fitful shadows on the plaster walls, sputtered Hght across the face of their weeping mother. Two days before her husband had been brought home dead — and a hero. He had taken his painting class for an outing at a lake near Grand Rapids, Michigan. They were having a gay time in the water when suddenly there was a frightened cry. One of the boys had jfone out beyond his depth. Joe Lopez forgot that most of his pupils could swim much letter than he. He forgot that he had a wife j -and two children at home ; he forgot everything except that a boy was drowning. And when others got the two out, the student was revived — but Joe Lopez was dead. Joe Cook can't remember any of this. He can't even rememJber bow he felt two months later when he sat in the cool, candleJit church a^ an old priest read the same solemn service over the body of his mother. He was far too young to realize what it meant to be an orphan. He only* knows today what people have tojd him : that when his mother s funeral was over, he left the cemetery with his older brother, I-eo, arkl ah eldcrty retired couple named Cook. The Cooks never had any children of their own. They liked boys, so they adopted Joe and Leo Lopez. They tried to guard the two youngsters against the world as once they had shielded them from the prying eyes of small-town neighbors in a graveyard at dusk. They hid. as though it were some deep disgrace, the fact that the boys had slept for two years m the pulled-out drawers of a worn theatrical trunk, hack in the days when their parents were vaudeville troupers. They planned for them to grow up far removed from the atmosphere of footlights and grease paint. Butthe theatre had been born in Joe Lopez' children, too strong to be overcome by environment. The urge to perform ran through their veins. By the time Joe was-^even he was using his foster-mother's clothes-line to walk. tight-Tope in the most approved circus fashion. She objected strenuously, but in her fondness she allowed him to continue. And within two years Joe Cook was proprietor of the biggest backyard pin-show in the outskirts of the then steadily growing town of Evansville, Indiana. He sola penny pink lemonades and hot dogs; he remodeled the old barn to resemble as closely as possible the Evansville opry house — and he brought more song and laughter to that neighWhood than it has ever seen since. Today his happiest hours are the occasional ones spent in walking quietly alxnit the scenes of his childhood, back home. The very roots of his life are there. In a public square stands a monument to Joe Cook — the only monument ever erected to an actor while he was still alive. Nobody was allowed to donate more than two dollars to it ; it was made possible by dimes, quarters ~and half dollars given with full hearts by oldsters who remember the days when an elf lived in Evansville. and by youngsters who laugh up their sleeves at Skippy and would give up their new red wagons to 1* like Joe Cook. There he can have not only the keys to the city but the city itself, if he should happen to want it. He always could. "The glibhest cajoling I ever did was to persuade my fostermother to install fifty electric lights in that barn, when the old homestead got along as l>est it could with merely gas. And that was some cajoling," he' sighed, sinking into a comfortably upholstered chair at the Educational (Continued on page 75) Ay, Bland 1ftulkc>ttc<Md He become an idol, and he still remains the salt of the, earth. Everyone loves Joe Cook.