Wally Cox

He began his career as a standup comedian and played the title character of the popular early U.S. television series Mister Peepers from 1952 to 1955.

[1] When he was 10, he moved with his divorced mother (mystery author Eleanor Blake) and a younger sister to Evanston, Illinois, where he became close friends with another child in the neighborhood, Marlon Brando.

According to the accounts of a fellow enlisted soldier, Cox adopted odd behaviors while undergoing basic training at Camp Wolters, Texas, such as putting on a uniform and full pack to pick flowers on Sundays, to receive a discharge from the Army.

Just as the studio audience had reached a peak of laughter, Cox suddenly switched gears, changed characters, and sang a high-pitched version of "The Drunkard Song" ("There is a Tavern in the Town"), punctuated by eccentric yodels.

"Wallace Cox" earned a big hand that night, but lost by a narrow margin to The Chordettes; yet he made enough of a hit to record his radio routine for an RCA Victor single.

Series producer Fred Coe approached Cox about a starring role in a proposed live television sitcom Mister Peepers, which he accepted.

He played a prominent supporting role as Preacher Goodman in Spencer's Mountain (1963), a Navy sonar operator in The Bedford Incident (1964), and a drug-addicted doctor opposite Marlon Brando in the World War II suspense film Morituri (1965).

He played character roles in more than 20 motion pictures and worked frequently as a guest star in television drama, comedy and variety series in the 1960s and early 1970s.

He was cast as a down-on-his-luck prospector seeking a better life for his family in an episode of Alias Smith and Jones, a Western comedy; and in Up Your Teddy Bear (aka Mother) (1970), he starred with Julie Newmar.

His television and screen persona was that of a shy, timid but kind man who wore thick eyeglasses and spoke in a pedantic, high-pitched voice.

Cox wrote a number of books, including Mister Peepers: A Sort of Novel, co-written with William Redfield,[10] which was created by adapting several scripts from the television series; My Life as a Small Boy, an idealized depiction of his childhood; a parody and update of Horatio Alger in Ralph Makes Good, which was probably originally a screen treatment for an unmade film intended to star Cox; and a children's book, The Tenth Life of Osiris Oakes.

While he maintained a meek onscreen persona, TV viewers did get a glimpse of Cox's physicality on an episode of I've Got a Secret, aired on May 11, 1960, in which he and host Garry Moore ran around the stage assembling furniture while the panel was blindfolded.

Cox on an episode of
Lost in Space (1967)