- Married to his second wife, Peggy, for 25 years before they divorced. About three years later, they remarried and remained together for another 19 years until she passed away.
- After a very successful career of playing lightweight heavies and losers, he ended his career as a connected underworld boss who knew how to make things happen on Magnum, P.I. (1980) as "Ice Pick".
- He received his nickname "Hollywood's Lightest Heavy" from playing cowardly villains in his movies.
- His film career, including his later television roles, lasted almost 60 years.
- Appears in three Oscar Best Picture nominees: Sergeant York (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Shane (1953).
- He has appeared in seven films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Sergeant York (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Ball of Fire (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), Shane (1953), One-Eyed Jacks (1961) and Rosemary's Baby (1968).
- Enlisted in US Army on 8/15/1942. Height and weight at enlistment given as 5' 5" and 123 lb. Education given as three years of high school.
- He died on the same day as his Johnny Cool (1963) co-star Elizabeth Montgomery.
- He would play characters that could be completely passive and scared or entirely cold-blooded: each to their own extreme.
- Was an assistant stage manager at age 17.
- Biography in "Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir" by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry.
- Was a lifelong registered Republican.
- Frequently appeared in later life as disheveled and confused old men: VFX expert Glenn Erickson recalls of watching Cook film his cameo in 1941 (1979), "He turned his 'drooling dotard' persona on and off for each take, as if throwing a light switch".
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