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Evening cloak or manteau, from Costume Parisien, 1823

A cloak is a type of loose garment that is worn over indoor clothing and serves the same purpose as an overcoat; it protects the wearer from the cold, rain or wind for example, or it may form part of a fashionable outfit or uniform. Cloaks are as old as human history; there has nearly always been some form of long, unstructured outer garment used to protect people from the weather. Over time cloak designs have been changed to match current styles and textile needs.

Cloaks generally fasten at the neck or over the shoulder, vary in length, from hip all the way down to the ankle, mid-calf being the normal length. They may have an attached hood, and may cover and fasten down the front, in which case they have holes or slits for the hands to pass through. However, cloaks are almost always sleeveless.

Opera cloak[link]

In full evening dress in the Western countries, ladies and gentlemen frequently use the cloak as a fashion statement, or to protect the fine fabrics of eveningwear from the elements, especially where a coat would crush; or hide; the garment. Opera cloaks are made of quality materials such as wool or cashmere, velvet and satin.

Ladies may wear a long (over the shoulders or to ankles) cloak usually called a cape, or a full-length cloak. Gentlemen wear an ankle- or full-length cloak. Formal cloaks often have expensive, coloured linings and trimmings such as silk, satin, velvet and fur.

In literature and the arts[link]

Couple hiding under the same cloak, fragment of an Ancient Greek red-figure cup, ca. 525 BC–500 BC, found in Athens. Louvre Museum, Paris.

Cloaks are a staple garment in the fantasy genre due to the popularity of medieval settings, although fantasy cloak designs normally have more resemblance to 18th- or 19th-century cloaks rather than medieval ones. They are also usually associated with witches, wizards and vampires; the best-known stage version of Dracula, which first made actor Bela Lugosi prominent, featured him wearing it so that his exit through a trap door concealed on the stage could seem sudden. When Lugosi reprised his role as Dracula for the 1931 Universal Studios motion picture version of the play, he retained the cloak as part of his outfit, which made such a strong impression that cloaks came to be equated with "Count" Vladislav Dracula in nearly all non-historical media depictions of him.

Fantasy[link]

Fantasy cloaks are often magical. For example, they may grant the person wearing it invisibility as in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. A similar sort of garment is worn by the members of the Fellowship of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, although instead of granting complete invisibility, the Elf-made cloaks simply appear to shift between any natural color (e.g. green, gray, brown) to help the wearer to blend in with their surroundings. Alternatively, they may nullify magical projectiles, as the "cloak of magic resistance" in NetHack. In addition, the magical hide armor that Hercules made for himself from the skin of the Nemean Lion, at the end of Hercules' first labor, might also be seen as an early idea of a magical cloak. This latter was notable because it was said to be impervious to all cutting and impact weapons.

Metaphor[link]

Figuratively, a cloak may be anything that disguises or conceals something. In many science fiction worlds such as Star Trek and Stargate, there are cloaking devices, which provide a way to avoid detection or to make an object appear invisible.

Because they keep a person hidden and conceal a weapon, the phrase cloak and dagger has come to refer to espionage and secretive crimes: it suggests murder from hidden sources. "Cloak and dagger" stories are thus mystery, detective, and crime stories of this. The vigilante duo of Marvel comics Cloak and Dagger is a reference to this.

See also[link]

• Cape
• Mantle (clothing)
• Robe
• Shawl
• Poncho
• Shroud
• Stole
• Veil

References[link]

• Oxford English Dictionary
• Ashelford, Jane: The Art of Dress: Clothing and Society 1500-1914, Abrams, 1996. ISBN 0-8109-6317-5
• Baumgarten, Linda: What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America, Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09580-5
• Payne, Blanche: History of Costume from the Ancient Egyptians to the Twentieth Century, Harper & Row, 1965. No ISBN for this edition; ASIN B0006BMNFS
• Picken, Mary Brooks: The Fashion Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls, 1957. (1973 edition ISBN 0-308-10052-2)

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Thomas Frederick "Tommy" Cooper (19 March 1921 – 15 April 1984) was a popular Welsh prop comedian and magician from Caerphilly, South Wales.

Cooper was a member of The Magic Circle, and respected by traditional magicians. Famed for his red fez, his appearance was large and lumbering at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and more than 15 stone (210 lb; 95 kg) in weight.^[5]

On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed and soon after died from a heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show Live From Her Majesty's, transmitted live from Her Majesty's Theatre. His stage persona required that his act intentionally went wrong for comic purposes, leading to some initial uncertainty about whether this collapse was real.

Biography[link]

Born in Caerphilly, South Wales, at 19 Llwyn Onn Street, Trecenydd, Cooper was delivered by the woman who owned the house in which the family was lodging. His parents were Welsh-born army recruiting sergeant father Thomas H. (Tom) Cooper, and his English-born wife Gertrude (née Gertrude C. Wright) from Crediton, Devon.^[6][7] In light of the heavily polluted air and the offer of a job for his father, the family moved to Exeter, Devon, when Cooper was three and gained the West Country accent that was part of his act.^[8]

The family lived in the back of Haven Banks, where Cooper attended Mount Radford School for Boys, and helped his parents run their ice cream van, which attended fairs on the weekend. At the age of eight an aunt bought Cooper a magic set and he spent hours perfecting the tricks.^[9]

Magic ran in his family—his brother David (born 1930)^[10] opened a magic shop in the 1960s in Slough High Street (then Buckinghamshire now Berkshire) called D. & Z. Cooper's Magic Shop.^[11]

World War II[link]

After school, Cooper became a shipwright in Hythe, Hampshire, and in 1940 was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards regiment of the British Army in World War II. He served initially in Montgomery's Desert Rats in Egypt. Cooper became part of the NAAFI entertainment party and developed an act around his magic tricks interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume which required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop, Cooper reached out and borrowed the fez from a passing waiter which got huge laughs.^[12] It was from this incident that stemmed two of the attributes that were a hallmark of his later act: the ever-present fez hat and his aptitude for slapstick comedy.

Act development[link]

When he was demobbed after seven years of military service, Cooper took up show business on Christmas Eve, 1947—he would later add a popular monologue about his military experience as "Cooper the Trooper". Cooper worked in variety theatres around the country and at London's Windmill Theatre, where he performed 52 shows per week.^[12]

Cooper had developed his conjuring skills and was a member of The Magic Circle, but there are various versions as to where he developed his act delivery of "failed" magic tricks:^[12]

• Performing to his shipbuilding colleagues when everything went wrong. Devastated, Cooper still noted that the failed tricks got laughs.
• During his British Army career.
• At a post-war audition, at which his tricks went wrong, but which the panel thoroughly enjoyed.

To keep the audience on their toes, Cooper threw in the occasional trick that worked when it was least expected.

Career[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

In 1947 Cooper got his big break with Miff Ferrie, at that time trombonist in a band called The Jackdaws, who booked him to appear as the second spot comedian in a show starring sand dance act "Marqueeze and the Dance of the Seven Veils". Cooper then began a two-year period of arduous performing. Ir included a tour of Europe and a stintin pantomime, playing one of Cinderella's ugly sisters. The period culminated in a season long booking at the Windmill Theatre where he doubled up doing cabarets, one week performing in 52 shows. Ferrie would remain Cooper's sole agent for the next 37 years, until Cooper's death in 1984.

Cooper rapidly became a top-liner in variety with his turn as the conjurer whose tricks never succeeded, but it was his television work which raised him to national prominence. After his debut on the BBC talent show New to You in March 1948, he soon started starring in his own shows, and was popular with audiences for four decades, most notably through his work with London Weekend Television from 1968 to 1972 and with Thames Television from 1973 to 1980. Thanks to his many television shows during the mid 70s he was one of the biggest and most recognizable comedians in the world.

Cooper was a heavy drinker and smoker, and experienced a decline in health during the late 1970s, suffering a heart attack in 1977 while in Rome, where he was performing a show. Three months later he was back on television in Night Out at the London Casino. By 1980, though, his drinking meant that Thames Television would not give him another starring series, and Cooper's Half Hour was his last. He did continue to guest on other television shows, however, and worked with Eric Sykes on two Thames productions in 1982:

John Fisher writes in Cooper's biography, "Everyone agrees that he was mean. Quite simply he was acknowledged as the tightest man in show business, with a pathological dread of reaching into his pocket." One of Cooper's stunts was to pay the exact taxi fare and when leaving the cab to slip something into the taxi driver's pocket saying, "Have a drink on me." That something would turn out to be a tea bag.^[13]

By the mid-1970s, alcohol had started to erode Cooper's professionalism and club owners complained that he turned up late or rushed through his show in five minutes. In addition, he suffered chronic indigestion, lumbago, sciatica, bronchitis and severe circulation problems in his legs. When Cooper realised the extent of his injuries he cut down on his drinking and the energy and sparkle returned to his act and some of his later television performances were a revelation. However, he never stopped drinking and could be fallible: on an otherwise triumphant appearance with Parkinson he forgot to set the safety catch on the guillotine illusion into which he had cajoled Parkinson. Only a last-minute intervention by the floor manager saved Parkinson from serious injury or worse.^[14]

Death on a live television show[link]

On 15 April 1984, Cooper collapsed from a heart attack in front of millions of television viewers, midway through his act on the London Weekend Television variety show Live From Her Majesty's, transmitted live from Her Majesty's Theatre—not, as is often reported, the London Palladium.

An assistant had helped him put on a cloak for his sketch, while Jimmy Tarbuck, the host, was hiding behind the curtain waiting to pass him different props which he would then appear to pull from inside his gown.^[15] The assistant smiled at him as he collapsed, believing that it was a joke.^[16] Likewise, the audience laughed as he fell, until it became apparent he was seriously ill.^[15] At this point the show's director, Alasdair MacMillan, cued the orchestra to play music for an unscripted commercial break (noticeable by several seconds of blank screen while LWT's master control contacted regional stations to start transmitting advertisements)^[15] and Jimmy Tarbuck's manager tried to pull Cooper back through the curtains. It was decided to continue with the show. Dustin Gee and Les Dennis were the act that had to follow Tommy Cooper, and other stars proceeded to present their acts in the limited space in front of the stage. For a long time, a rumour circulated that the size 13 feet from his 6' 4" frame protruded underneath the curtains. While the show continued, efforts were being made backstage to revive Cooper, not made easier by the darkness. It was not until a second commercial break that ambulancemen were able to move his body to Westminster Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His death wasn't officially reported until the next morning, although the incident was the lead item on the news programme that followed the show.

The video of Tommy Cooper suffering a heart attack on stage has been uploaded to numerous video sharing websites. YouTube was heavily criticised by the press when footage of the incident was posted on their website in May 2009.^[16] On 28 December 2011, segments of the Live From Her Majesty's clip, including Cooper collapsing on stage, were screened on Channel 4 in the UK, on a programme titled "The Untold Tommy Cooper".

Cooper was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium in London.^[17] He was survived by his wife, Gwen (whom he called 'Dove'), and two children, Thomas and Vicky, and a two-year-old grandchild, Tam. Cooper's son Thomas, who was an actor in his own right, changed his name for stage to Thomas Henty (his mother's maiden name). Henty said in interviews that, though he loved his dad, he needed his own identity to make a career on stage, and told very few who his famed father was, to further his dramatic acting career. Eventually son Tom travelled on the road as manager to his father. He also acted as occasional stage manager to his father, and was backstage with his father on the night he died. But like his father, son Thomas was a heavy drinker, and he died in August 1988 at Charing Cross Hospital in Fulham, London, aged 32. He died of haematemesis, following complications caused by liver failure. Doctors had attempted to pump seventy pints of new blood into his body, but the blood failed to clot, and after three days his mother took the decision to have his life support machine switched off. Thomas Henty left a son, Tam Henty.

Legacy[link]

Statue of Tommy Cooper, near the castle, in Caerphilly

A statue of Cooper was unveiled in his hometown of Caerphilly, Wales, in 2008 by fellow entertainer Sir Anthony Hopkins, who is patron of The Tommy Cooper Society. The statue was sculpted by James Done.^[18] In 2009 for Red Nose Day, a charity Red Nose was put on the statue, but the nose was stolen.^[18]

In a 2005 poll The Comedians' Comedian, Cooper was voted the sixth greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He is commonly cited as one of the best comedians of all time, with several polls placing him at number one.^{[citation needed]}

Jerome Flynn has toured with his own tribute show to Cooper called Just Like That. In February 2007, The Independent reported that Andy Harries, a producer of The Queen, was working on a dramatization about the last week of Tommy Cooper's life.^[19] Harries described Cooper's death as "extraordinary" in that the whole thing was broadcast live on national television.^[20]

dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip wrote a song entitled 'Tommy C—about Cooper's career and death—which appears on their 2008 album Angles.

Recordings[link]

• "Don't Jump Off the Roof Dad" (1961), words and muisc by Cy Coben, single, Palette Records (PG 9019) (a chart hit)
• "Country Dreaming" - 12” LP
• "Ginger" - 7” single
• "Happy Tommy"- 7" single
• "Just Like That" 7” single
• "Masters of Comedy"- CD
• "My Name Is Tommy" - 12” LP
• "No Arms Will Ever Hold You" - 7” single
• "Sweet Words Of Love" - 7" single
• "Tommy Cooper Very Best Of" - CD, DVD
• "Walkin' Home From School" - 7" single
• "We'll Meet Again" - 7" single

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Tommy Cooper Society