[4] In the early forties, Cook wrote a series of stories for Redbook about a precocious teenage girl named Violet who helps to untangle her father's love life.
He made his debut with the romantic comedy The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945) and followed with the psychological drama The Secret Heart (1946) and the wartime romance High Barbaree (1947).
Cook's treatment for Strangers on a Train is usually given credit for heightening the film's homoerotic subtext (only hinted at in the novel) and the softening of the villain, Bruno, from the coarse alcoholic of the book into a dapper, charming mama's boy.
[8] For the remainder of the 1950s, Cook worked in television, contributing scripts to series such as Studio One in Hollywood, Suspense, Front Row Center, Playhouse 90, Colgate Theatre, Climax!, Have Gun – Will Travel and 77 Sunset Strip.
The New Dramatists of New York City annually bestow a Whitfield Cook Award on a playwright for the best unproduced, unpublished play, as determined by a jury.