Al Cooke on AllMovie

Dapper American silent-screen comic Al Cooke was a former rancher and self-described "boulevardier" before entering films with Mack Sennett in 1921. Cooke became a star with a minor Poverty Row company known as Film Booking Office, a purveyor of cheap Westerns and two-reel comedy series. FBO teamed him with the uncouth-looking Danish comic Kit Guard, and the two romped through a host of comedy series that included The Telephone Girl (1924), The Go-Getters (1925), The Beauty Parlor (1927), and perhaps best of all, The Wisecrackers (1929), as well as features like Legionnaires in Paris and In a Moment of Temptation (both 1927). Sound interrupted what had become a very potent comedy team, but Cooke and Guard were reunited by Poverty Row entrepreneur Larry Darmour for Defenders of the Law (1931), a wretched little gangster melodrama that received very few bookings.