Olga Cook

Cook was from New York City,^[3] the daughter of policeman and athlete Edward Cook and Margaret A. Martin Cook.^[4][5] She graduated from Washington Irving High School,^[6] and studied singing in New York with Francis Stuart.^[5]

Cook began her stage career as a vaudeville performer.^[7] She appeared in Broadway musicals, in The Passing Show of 1919,^[8] The Midnight Rounders of 1921, Blossom Time (1921–1923),^[9][10] and The Passing Show of 1924. She also sang on radio broadcasts,^[11] and played herself in one short silent film, Starland Review No. 4 (1922). She was considered a stage beauty,^[3] and her diet and style choices were reported in detail.^[12][13]

Cook returned to vaudeville in 1923,^[14][15] and starred in Gus Edwards' Sunbonnet Sue revue.^[16] "Olga Cook is the queen bee of vaudeville singers," noted Washington Daily News in 1923. "No perching and twittering; no fussing and fooling. She strides to the stage, opens her mouth, and beautiful sounds come out. She is a thoro, banging hit, and deservedly."^[17] She appeared in The Student Prince in Chicago in 1925,^[5] and announced that she was taking "a well-earned rest" from the stage in 1926.^[18]

Cook's rest was short-lived. In 1927, she and pianist Eric Zardo toured together, and performed at a midnight benefit in New York City for Mississippi flood victims.^[19] In 1928, she starred as Barbara Fritchie in an operetta called My Maryland, when it was produced in Philadelphia, New York, and Hartford.^[20][21] In 1934, she sang at a Daughters of the American Revolution memorial service at a battlefield on Mackinac Island.^[22]

In December 1925,^[23][24] Cook married G. Keith Line, a "millionaire sportsman" who owned horse stables and riding academies in Illinois, Michigan and Florida.^[25][26][27] The Lines lived in Chicago in 1930 and 1940.^[28][29] She died in 1991.^[2]