Millen Cooke
(March 17, 1915 – May 21, 1995)
Millen Cooke (later, Belknap, then Trench, née Wilma Dorothy Millen Vermilyea) had a brief writing career in the pulps, beginning in February 1936 with her poem, “Fear,” in Weird Tales (bylined Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea, although she was usually called Millen). The rest of her known work appeared under her first married name, the Ziff Davis house name Alexander Blade and, possibly, unknown pen names.
She was born in Dilley, Oregon. She married actor and occultist John Starr Cooke (1920–1976) in 1943, the groom having been advised to wed by a Ouiji board. They were at least somewhat involved with the sf community. In Fantasy Times 60 (December 1947, p. 11), Donald B. Day reported that at the September 28 meeting of the Portland Science-Fantasy Society, members were entertained by a recording of a “hilarious skit” featuring local authors John and Dot de Courcy and the Cookes.
Millen’s last known story appeared in Other Worlds in May 1950. In 1951, Millen gave birth to a daughter, Valerie Melza Cooke, John denied paternity, and the couple divorced. Around the same time, Millen became involved with Scientology and was next briefly married to William Burke Belknap, Jr. (1923–2010), a Scientologist who headed L. Ron Hubbard's Freudian Foundation of America, Inc..
On June 16, 1961, Millen was married a third time, to William Francis Brinsley Le Poer Trench, (1911–1995), an Irish and Dutch noble, and later Eighth Earl of Clancarty, Seventh Marquess of Heusden and a member of the UK House of Lords. A believer in ancient astronauts, hollow earth, flying saucers and other pseudoscience, he was editor of the Flying Saucer Review from 1956 to 1959, and wrote several books on the subject. Reportedly, Millen was an uncredited contributor. They divorced in 1969.
We don’t know what Millen did for the next quarter century, except that she was living in Australia when she died.
- Bibliography at ISFDB.
- “Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea (1915-1995)” by Terence E. Hanley at Tellers of Weird Tales, July 4, 2011.
FEAR: A Fantasy By Wilma Dorothy Vermilyea I saw a gray shape walking in the night. Nor did I dream; It crossed the vineyard, passed along the hill And stirred the stream. And when it moved across the wheat like light All men stood still. I heard no footsteps, yet I saw a throng Of marching things That leering followed where the pale form led On noiseless wings — And not a wheat-ear where they passed along Was harvested. From Weird Tales (February 1936, p. 127).
| Person | 1915—1995 |
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