Carole Cook, who was in the movie “Sixteen Candles,” a Broadway star, and a longtime friend and collaborator of Lucille Ball, has died. She turned 98. Robert Malcolm, Cook’s agent, said on Wednesday that the sad news was true and that Cook had died three days before her 99th birthday.
She was one of my favorites. She passed away from heart failure today. She was in the hospital. She came home last week. Her birthday would have been Saturday. She would have been 99. She died peacefully, and her husband was there,
Malcolm shared.
She was a wonderfully gifted and outrageous woman. She could say the dirtiest things and you would never be offended,
he added.
She was a lovely, lovely person. She was an incredibly talented woman and loved what she did.
In 1959, Carole Cook moved from Texas to Hollywood. She got her start on an episode of Ball’s Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. Mildred Frances Cook was born with the name Mildred, but Ball persuaded her to change it to Carole, after the actress Carole Lombard, whom she admired most. She joined Desilu after that.
Then, Cook worked with Ball on 18 episodes of The Lucy Show from 1963 to 1968, often as Lucy Carmichael’s friend Thelma Green, and on five episodes of Here’s Lucy on CBS from 1969 to 1974.
People say that the two were such good friends that Cook moved into Ball’s house after she split up with Desi Arnaz.
Cook and Tom Troupe got married in 1964, and the Ball was Cook’s maid of honor. Cook and Troupe were both in the casts of The Lion in Winter in Los Angeles and Dallas. They also worked together again in The Gin Game.
Cook also played Don Knotts’ wife in The Incredible Mr. Limpet, which came out in 1964, and Molly Ringwald’s grandmother in Sixteen Candles, which came out in 1984.
In 1965, she was the second actress to play Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! The first was Carol Channing, who played Dolly Levi in the play the first time around. She was also in the first shows of Romantic Comedy and 42nd Street on Broadway.
Cook has also worked on Kojak, Dynasty, Cagney & Lacey, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, That Girl, McMillan & Wife, Chico and the Man, Magnum, P.I., Hart to Hart, Grey’s Anatomy, The Gauntlet, American Gigolo, Summer Lovers, and Home on the Range, which came out in 2004.
In 2018, she did one of her last shows. It was a one-woman show at Feinstein’s/54 Below in New York, where she sang and talked about her life.
Cook is survived by her husband, stepson Christopher, and his wife Becky, as well as her sister Regina and nieces and nephews.
