Hyfler/Rosner
2005-09-07 02:38:48 UTC
The Independent
Photographer, gallerist and literary agent
07 September 2005
Molly Malone Cook, photographer, gallerist, literary agent
and bookseller: born San Francisco 5 January 1925; died
Provincetown, Massachusetts 26 August 2005.
Molly Malone Cook was a great Bohemian American. An
accomplished photographer in her own right, she set up the
first photographic gallery on the East Coast, was sometime
assistant to the writer Norman Mailer, and lived with Mary
Oliver, perhaps America's best-loved living poet. Even in
the last decade of her life she remained - perhaps more than
ever - a fearless spirit of immaculate taste and fierce
opinions, stocky of build, with a shock of white hair. "She
could be acerbic, but underneath it, she was the warmest
woman I've ever met," as her friend the publisher Helene
Atwan observed.
Cook lived with Oliver in the Bohemian enclave of
Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod's outstretched arm; a
place historically home to artists, writers and, latterly,
tourists and gays. Its Commercial Street runs the gamut of
American life: from sandy windswept beaches to the west,
through a town centre thronged with transvestites and
day-trippers with baby-buggies, to the East End, aestival
home to Waspy families on vacation. It was here, in the
quieter end of town, that Cook and Oliver made their
year-round seaside home. The pair kept a boat, captained by
Cook (with help from their young friend Josiah Mayo) like
some salty sea-dog. After clam pasta, the pair would sail
their friends out into the bay, lulled by the waves, keeping
the conversation moving along with their dry double act.
Molly Malone Cook was born in San Francisco, and grew up
idolising Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. She spent her early
twenties travelling in Europe, where she worked for the US
government in Heidelberg and began to be interested in
photography. In New York, she worked as a photographer for
the newly established Village Voice, but soon followed a
well-worn path to Provincetown - then the summer home of
writers such as Norman Mailer, and painters such as Robert
Motherwell and Mark Rothko. There she set up her
ground-breaking photographic gallery. The VII Photographers'
Studio represented the work of Edward Steichen, Berenice
Abbott and Eugene Atget, among others, but it was an era
when photography was yet to be rated as an art in itself.
Indeed, when Cook asked Steichen to join her roster, he
said, "Are you rich or crazy?" Her reply was typical of her
laconic wit: "I'm not rich."
The gallery was well patronised, but it did not pay the
rent. Cook diversified with her idiosyncratic East End
Bookshop, purveying what she deemed "good literature"; a rep
who tried to sell her Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the
Dolls was sent away with a flea in her ear. None the less,
in 1966 Cook had the acumen to hire a six-foot-one, skinny
speed-freak with long hair and a pencil moustache. It was
the beginning of a 40-year friendship with John Waters, who
was about to shock the movie world with such
counter-cultural landmarks as Pink Flamingoes (1972) and
Female Trouble (1974). In his book Shock Value (1981),
Waters wrote,
I really wanted to work in the bookstore owned by Molly
Malone Cook, a wonderfully gruff woman who allowed her help
to be rude to obnoxious tourist customers. I nagged her for
a job until she finally gave in and let me work "when it
rained" to take care of all the tourists who flocked in from
the beach.
Waters adds,
She was beautiful and grumpy and smart in both senses of the
word - brainy and fashionable at the same time. She was my
Bohemian mother and father in a way.
Cook continued to work as a professional photographer,
making portraits of such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt,
Walker Evans, Robert Motherwell and Adlai Stevenson, but her
career was cut short by the breathing problems which were
later to curtail her life: her lungs were unable to cope
with the chemicals of the darkroom. Meanwhile, her
relationship with the playwright Lorraine Hansberry - author
of To Be Young, Gifted and Black and A Raisin in the Sun,
the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway
(in 1959) - ended with Hansberry's early death from cancer,
aged 34, in 1965.
Cook had met Mary Oliver in 1958, at the former home of the
poet Edna St Vincent Millay in upstate New York - the two
women having come to visit Millay's sister Norma. Six years
later Cook and Oliver moved into a Provincetown boathouse
owned by one of the port's Portuguese families, the Seguras.
They travelled together on Oliver's trips to give readings
or classes, and spent several years visiting Virginia in
search of Cook's Southern roots - she was delighted to
discover that her ancestry stretched back to Judith
Jefferson, aunt of President Thomas Jefferson.
In the 1970s, Cook worked as assistant to another friend and
near neighbour. Norman Mailer had summered in Provincetown
since the 1950s, memorably describing it to Jacqueline
Kennedy as "the Wild West of the East". The famously
irascible writer's relationship with Cook was colourful, to
say the least: both were strong-willed personalities, with
deeply entrenched opinions of their own. Their friendship
ended on a down note, yet both still spoke of each other
with affection.
Cook went on to establish her own literary agency,
representing Mary Oliver and other writers; "I know I
wouldn't want to have to negotiate with her," says Waters.
Cook was duly proud when Oliver - who dedicated many of her
exquisite works to her partner - won the Pulitzer Prize for
her 1984 collection, American Primitive. In 1992, when
Oliver won the National Book Award for her New and Selected
Poems, she turned her acceptance speech into a tribute to
"Molly Malone Cook, the best reader anybody could ever have.
She is the light of my life, and I'd like to thank her
publicly."
Molly and Mary were at their best in Provincetown. Their
house seemed to have grown around them. Its windows looked
out from grey-shingled walls on to the limpid light of Cape
Cod Bay and past the harbour breakwater, where schools of
dolphins swam. At night they watched the blinking green
light of Long Point lighthouse. Their rooms were filled with
light, books, people and animals, all seemingly spilling in
from the beach that ran outside their back door. The walls
were equally filled, with an extraordinary array of art;
from Molly's own photographs, to a rare screenprint
advertising an appearance by Andy Warhol and the Exploding
Plastic Inevitable in Provincetown.
And here, even as she was increasingly disabled by illness,
Molly Malone Cook sat in splendour, drinking in all the
local gossip while scanning the piles of magazines and
papers John Waters brought her each day. When I last saw
her, in July, sitting up in bed, she was as thirsty for news
as ever, as she watched the boats sail past her window.
Philip Hoare
Photographer, gallerist and literary agent
07 September 2005
Molly Malone Cook, photographer, gallerist, literary agent
and bookseller: born San Francisco 5 January 1925; died
Provincetown, Massachusetts 26 August 2005.
Molly Malone Cook was a great Bohemian American. An
accomplished photographer in her own right, she set up the
first photographic gallery on the East Coast, was sometime
assistant to the writer Norman Mailer, and lived with Mary
Oliver, perhaps America's best-loved living poet. Even in
the last decade of her life she remained - perhaps more than
ever - a fearless spirit of immaculate taste and fierce
opinions, stocky of build, with a shock of white hair. "She
could be acerbic, but underneath it, she was the warmest
woman I've ever met," as her friend the publisher Helene
Atwan observed.
Cook lived with Oliver in the Bohemian enclave of
Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod's outstretched arm; a
place historically home to artists, writers and, latterly,
tourists and gays. Its Commercial Street runs the gamut of
American life: from sandy windswept beaches to the west,
through a town centre thronged with transvestites and
day-trippers with baby-buggies, to the East End, aestival
home to Waspy families on vacation. It was here, in the
quieter end of town, that Cook and Oliver made their
year-round seaside home. The pair kept a boat, captained by
Cook (with help from their young friend Josiah Mayo) like
some salty sea-dog. After clam pasta, the pair would sail
their friends out into the bay, lulled by the waves, keeping
the conversation moving along with their dry double act.
Molly Malone Cook was born in San Francisco, and grew up
idolising Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. She spent her early
twenties travelling in Europe, where she worked for the US
government in Heidelberg and began to be interested in
photography. In New York, she worked as a photographer for
the newly established Village Voice, but soon followed a
well-worn path to Provincetown - then the summer home of
writers such as Norman Mailer, and painters such as Robert
Motherwell and Mark Rothko. There she set up her
ground-breaking photographic gallery. The VII Photographers'
Studio represented the work of Edward Steichen, Berenice
Abbott and Eugene Atget, among others, but it was an era
when photography was yet to be rated as an art in itself.
Indeed, when Cook asked Steichen to join her roster, he
said, "Are you rich or crazy?" Her reply was typical of her
laconic wit: "I'm not rich."
The gallery was well patronised, but it did not pay the
rent. Cook diversified with her idiosyncratic East End
Bookshop, purveying what she deemed "good literature"; a rep
who tried to sell her Jacqueline Susann's The Valley of the
Dolls was sent away with a flea in her ear. None the less,
in 1966 Cook had the acumen to hire a six-foot-one, skinny
speed-freak with long hair and a pencil moustache. It was
the beginning of a 40-year friendship with John Waters, who
was about to shock the movie world with such
counter-cultural landmarks as Pink Flamingoes (1972) and
Female Trouble (1974). In his book Shock Value (1981),
Waters wrote,
I really wanted to work in the bookstore owned by Molly
Malone Cook, a wonderfully gruff woman who allowed her help
to be rude to obnoxious tourist customers. I nagged her for
a job until she finally gave in and let me work "when it
rained" to take care of all the tourists who flocked in from
the beach.
Waters adds,
She was beautiful and grumpy and smart in both senses of the
word - brainy and fashionable at the same time. She was my
Bohemian mother and father in a way.
Cook continued to work as a professional photographer,
making portraits of such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt,
Walker Evans, Robert Motherwell and Adlai Stevenson, but her
career was cut short by the breathing problems which were
later to curtail her life: her lungs were unable to cope
with the chemicals of the darkroom. Meanwhile, her
relationship with the playwright Lorraine Hansberry - author
of To Be Young, Gifted and Black and A Raisin in the Sun,
the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway
(in 1959) - ended with Hansberry's early death from cancer,
aged 34, in 1965.
Cook had met Mary Oliver in 1958, at the former home of the
poet Edna St Vincent Millay in upstate New York - the two
women having come to visit Millay's sister Norma. Six years
later Cook and Oliver moved into a Provincetown boathouse
owned by one of the port's Portuguese families, the Seguras.
They travelled together on Oliver's trips to give readings
or classes, and spent several years visiting Virginia in
search of Cook's Southern roots - she was delighted to
discover that her ancestry stretched back to Judith
Jefferson, aunt of President Thomas Jefferson.
In the 1970s, Cook worked as assistant to another friend and
near neighbour. Norman Mailer had summered in Provincetown
since the 1950s, memorably describing it to Jacqueline
Kennedy as "the Wild West of the East". The famously
irascible writer's relationship with Cook was colourful, to
say the least: both were strong-willed personalities, with
deeply entrenched opinions of their own. Their friendship
ended on a down note, yet both still spoke of each other
with affection.
Cook went on to establish her own literary agency,
representing Mary Oliver and other writers; "I know I
wouldn't want to have to negotiate with her," says Waters.
Cook was duly proud when Oliver - who dedicated many of her
exquisite works to her partner - won the Pulitzer Prize for
her 1984 collection, American Primitive. In 1992, when
Oliver won the National Book Award for her New and Selected
Poems, she turned her acceptance speech into a tribute to
"Molly Malone Cook, the best reader anybody could ever have.
She is the light of my life, and I'd like to thank her
publicly."
Molly and Mary were at their best in Provincetown. Their
house seemed to have grown around them. Its windows looked
out from grey-shingled walls on to the limpid light of Cape
Cod Bay and past the harbour breakwater, where schools of
dolphins swam. At night they watched the blinking green
light of Long Point lighthouse. Their rooms were filled with
light, books, people and animals, all seemingly spilling in
from the beach that ran outside their back door. The walls
were equally filled, with an extraordinary array of art;
from Molly's own photographs, to a rare screenprint
advertising an appearance by Andy Warhol and the Exploding
Plastic Inevitable in Provincetown.
And here, even as she was increasingly disabled by illness,
Molly Malone Cook sat in splendour, drinking in all the
local gossip while scanning the piles of magazines and
papers John Waters brought her each day. When I last saw
her, in July, sitting up in bed, she was as thirsty for news
as ever, as she watched the boats sail past her window.
Philip Hoare