[1] Cookson appeared in the play The Heiress on Broadway in 1947,[2] where he met his wife to-be, Beatrice Straight.
[3] Cookson's most famous stage role was of the love struck judge in Cole Porter's 1953 musical Can-Can[4] in which he introduced the song "It's All Right With Me.
"[1] Cookson starred in several feature films during the 1940s, including G. I. Honeymoon (1945) and Fear (1946), before moving exclusively to television during the following decade.
[6] In 1948, while starring in the Broadway production of The Heiress,[7] an adaptation of Henry James's Washington Square, Cookson met Beatrice Straight, who he was acting opposite.
[1] Beatrice died in 2001 from pneumonia in Northridge, Los Angeles at the age of eighty-six.