Cox used to amuse his friends at parties by performing character monologues inspired by people he had met. He and Marlon Brando had been friends since childhood and the pair shared a Greenwich Village apartment. Prior to that career transforming success, Cox had supported his sister and partially paralyzed mother (Eleanor Frances Atkinson, aka mystery writer Eleanor Blake) in NYC by working variously as a shoe-weaver, puppeteer apprentice, dance instructor (he taught the Lindy Hop at a dance school for $1.50 a lesson) and silversmith. As for the central character, comedian Steve Allen has observed "He is the mouse in us all we want to protect him and feel tender toward him." The show derived humor from slight exaggerations of mundane situations. At Cox's insistence, the show also eschewed broad physical gags and belly laughs in favor of gentle character comedy and smiles.
#Movie wally tv
Whereas contemporary TV comedy is dominated by wisecracking urbanites, this 50s hit, set in small-town America, rarely featured actual jokes. Cox first gained fame as Robinson Peepers, a mild-mannered high school science teacher in the once beloved sitcom "Mr. However that's exactly what he was on American TV for a significant chunk of the 1950s. Wally Cox once confessed "I used to consider myself insignificant and anonymous-looking." With his slight build, receding hairline, bespectacled visage and reedy voice, Cox confounds most notions of what a leading man should be.