Biography
Maxine Cooper was an American actress. Born Gladys Maxine Cooper in Chicago in 1924, she died in Los Angeles in 2009. She is best known for playing Velda, the secretary to Ralph Meeker's Mike Hammer, in the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly.
Cooper trained at Bennington College and the Pasadena Playhouse. She performed in Europe in the late 1940s, including BBC television work, before returning to the United States. Director Robert Aldrich cast her in Kiss Me Deadly after seeing her in a Los Angeles stage production of Peer Gynt. She appeared in small roles in his later films Autumn Leaves (1956) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and in television series including The Twilight Zone (1959), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) and Maverick (1957).
In 1957 she married screenwriter and producer Sy Gomberg. She largely retired from acting in the early 1960s to raise her family and became active as a social activist and photographer.
