During his life George Cram Cook was a farmer, aristocrat, author, socialist, scholar, soldier, politician, professor, and literary editor, but he is most noted for his role in the theater. He was a founder of the Provincetown Players, an experimental theater group that rebelled against the stilted, commercialized, mainstream Broadway theater. The Provincetown Players' goal was to establish an American theater that could nurture young playwrights. The group is noted as a leading force in the early-twentieth-century American "little theater" movement. Cook not only helped found the theater but also was a major artistic force; in addition to directing, designing, and acting for many productions, he also wrote several plays. Cook's dramas concerned an abiding desire to fuse the past with the present and had a tendency to satirize modern popular trends.

The son of Edward and Ellen Hubbard Cook, George Cram "Jig" Cook was born on 7 October...