This svelte, sultry-eyed brunette made a mark in one significant (some
consider "ultimate") film noir classic helmed by
Robert Aldrich in the mid-1950s -- and
then, within a short time, she vanished. Another in the long line of
pretty and promising actresses who traded in their career for marriage
to a well-established Hollywood industry member, Maxine Cooper would be
spotted on camera here and there after that but, for all intents and
purposes, she settled into her life as Mrs.
Sy Gomberg and the mother of two daughters,
Marsha (born in 1958) and Katherine (born in 1964).
Maxine was born on May 12, 1924, in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of
Richard, a General Electric distributor, and Gladys Cooper. She took
college studies at Bennington College in Vermont, and while there
became drawn to the theater. She moved West in the mid-1940s and
furthered her training at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. In
1946, she went to Europe to entertain the soldiers and decided to
settle in England, appearing on the BBC-TV and in a number of London
theater productions for nearly five years.
Maxine eventually returned to Los Angeles and broke into TV here with
featured roles in such popular shows as "Dragnet," "Perry Mason" and
"The Twilight Zone". She was noticed by film director Aldrich while
appearing in a Los Angeles stage production of "Peer Gynt" and he cast
her in what would be his seminal "B" noir
Rattennest (1955). Loosely
based on the Mickey Spillane novel,
Maxine made an enduring impression as Velda, faithful gal Friday to
cynical private eye Mike Hammer (played by
Ralph Meeker). The movie not only marked
the film debut of Maxine, but also that of
Cloris Leachman, whose ill-fated blonde
sets the story in motion. Maxine never again made the same kind of
impression in films. Within a couple of years she would retire. She
did, however, appear rather obscurely in two more films for Aldrich --
the Joan Crawford starrer
Herbststürme (1956), and, years
after her self-imposed retirement, the Grand Guignol classic
Was geschah wirklich mit Baby Jane? (1962),
which also starred Crawford and Bette Davis.
She also was seen much later in the TV-movie
Weiße Hölle (1980), written by
her husband.
Maxine married Oscar-nominated writer
Sy Gomberg near Reno, Nevada, in 1957, and
that was essentially that. Although her primary focus was raising her
family, she also became a strong supporter of civil rights. She and her
husband were among those who helped organize and represent the
Hollywood film and TV contingency during the 1960s march on Montgomery,
Alabama, alongside
Martin Luther King. She also became
an active protester of the Vietnam War and nuclear armament.
In later years Maxine pursued photography as a hobby. Some of her
photographs were used as illustrations in the popular
Howard Fast book "The Art of Zen
Meditation". Her husband, who contributed to Collier's Weekly and the
Saturday Evening Post and who taught screenwriting at the University of
Southern California for over ten years, preceded her in death,
suffering a massive heart attack at age 82 in 2001. Maxine passed away
of natural causes less than a decade later on April 4, 2009, at her Los
Angeles home.
