Cooke: A Caesar Who Built His Own Forum

By MIKE DOWNEY

April 7, 1997 12 AM PT

Jack Kent Cooke, the dandy who died Sunday, was watching a hockey game one night in 1973 with the distinguished Dr. Robert Kerlan, when a phone call came from Cooke’s personal doctor. Cooke had just taken a physical examination for a life-insurance policy. The doctor said he was pleased to report that Cooke had “the constitution of a 25-year-old man and the heart of an ox.”

Cooke hung up the phone and had a massive heart attack. Kerlan escorted him to a nearby sofa, where he performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Cooke’s mother, who came to many of the Forum games, was at his hospital bedside when Cooke regained consciousness.

“Mother,” Cooke said, formally, as always, “believe it or not, for 30 seconds I was dead.”

His mother smiled at him and said, “Tell me, Jack. Which way were you going? Heaven or hell?”

Such was life for the man who built the Forum--tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight. Jack Kent Cooke was a crusty, crafty Canadian fop who fancied himself master of the house, often treating loyal subjects with disdain. Yet he undeniably created an everlasting legend for himself, if not in great western civilization, then at least in great western sport.

From the time Bob Short and Frank Ryan sold the Lakers to him in 1965, the grandiloquent and pompous Cooke put on a show for the world to see. Short and Ryan made him pay cash, having heard too many stories. Twelve vice presidents of New York banks wheeled $5.175 million in currency that day on carts, through a subterranean Manhattan tunnel, from one bank to another, in a scene straight from some kind of Hollywood caper.

At that point in his life, Cooke had never seen an NBA game. He had sold soap and encyclopedias in Ontario as a young man, also playing saxophone and leading a band. He was living in Pebble Beach later when he heard that Walter O’Malley was considering giving 20% of his Dodger baseball club to Short and Ryan as part of a business deal that would merge the Dodgers and Lakers into one sports conglomerate.

Cooke overpaid the market value of the Lakers to buy them instead. Short had only paid $150,000 for the entire team, eight years before. But over the next 14 years, until Cooke sold his holdings to Jerry Buss to pay off a $49-million divorce settlement ordered by Judge Joseph Wapner--later TV’s “People’s Court” star--their worth had risen to $67.5 million.

Today, the basketball team alone is surely worth more than $200 million.

Jack Kent Cooke was an eccentric duck indeed. He acted the role of a squire, which he was called behind his back. He wore tweeds and was fascinated with his own fanciful vocabulary. Once, when it was insinuated by Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and others that Cooke had cost the Lakers a golden opportunity to acquire Julius Erving, the denial he issued was pure Cooke.

“Sheer balderdash,” he said.

Cooke’s master plan to make L.A. his personal dominion began with an attempt to own an American League baseball expansion franchise, but Gene Autry beat him to it. Upon his acquisition of the Lakers, the first thing Cooke set out to do was partner them with a hockey team for the 500,000 or so Canadians who lived in Southern California, but he resented having to share the Sports Arena with a small-time tenant called the Blades.

It was later, after the Kings became his but attracted little interest, that Cooke made his immortal wisecrack, the one about those 500,000 Canadians moving here “because obviously they wanted to get away from hockey.”

They also laughed when Cooke proclaimed that he would leave downtown L.A. and create his own palace. The head of the local sports commission, Ernest Debs, literally went, “Har, har, har,” right in his face, according to Cooke, who commissioned Charles Luckman Associates, the architects of the remodeled Madison Square Garden, to construct an arena befitting his personal taste.

“How should it look?” Cooke was asked.

“Like something 2,000 years ago and 6,000 miles east,” he replied.

Thus, the Forum--80 columns, each one 55 tons and 57 feet high--with theater seating and sufficient legroom for all. Cooke changed the Laker colors from blue and white. He hated purple--not the color, but the word--and renamed it “Forum blue.” He made the Lakers the first team not to wear white at home. And the bread and circuses began.

Cooke screamed at employees. He made them register the time and subject of each phone call, and threatened to fire anyone who let the phone ring three times. Cooke once made someone give up his coat, so he could wrap it around Coco, his dog. Hot Rod Hundley hated him. Fred Schaus left because of him. Cooke enraged his coach, Butch van Breda Kolff. He short-changed players on their bonus money after L.A.’s first championship. Even when West retired, he had to sue Cooke for back wages.

“Egads, they were prima donnas,” Cooke would say, contemptuously.

The squire held court. His private box at Washington Redskin football games was a social coup for anyone who sat there. When he invited Wilt Chamberlain to his home to discuss playing for the Lakers, the conversation turned to art and antiques. Cooke served tea there to John Wooden when he tried to coax the wizard into coaching the Lakers. When he served fish to young Magic Johnson, he wanted assurance that it was the best fish Earvin had ever eaten.

There was much about the man to dislike, yet when team executive Bill Sharman’s wife was seriously ill, Cooke phoned her every night. Cooke’s own wife at that time, Jeannie, reportedly attempted suicide four times. He once broke his own arm trying to stop her. Later on, Cooke wed a much-younger woman whose personal habits became such that recently U.S. drug and law enforcement officials proposed that she be deported.

A monument stands to Cooke in the town of Inglewood, one he built to himself. Airplanes fly over it. Athletes and entertainers perform inside it. Some today will call the Forum this man’s gift to the city, rather than Cooke’s gaudy self-tribute. This is, of course, sheer balderdash.

ADDITIONAL COVERAGE: Main Story--A1; Reaction, Chronology--C11; Commentary--C10

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JACK KENT COOKE’S LEGACY

* 1965--Buys the Lakers from trucking magnate Bob Short for $5.175 million, a big price tag in its day.

* 1966--Acquires the NHL expansion Kings.

* 1967--Builds the Forum (above).

* June 9, 1968--Acquires Wilt Chamberlain from Philadelphia.

* 1971--Promotes the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier at Madison Square Garden.

* 1974--Becomes majority owner of the Redskins.

* June 6, 1975--Trades with Milwaukee Bucks for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

* 1979--Lakers draft Magic Johnson.

* 1979--Sells the Lakers and the Kings to Dr. Jerry Buss for $67.5 million, then the largest transaction in sports history.