Frank James “Gary” Cooper (May 7, 1901 – May 13,
1961) was an
American
film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style
and his stoic, individualistic, emotionally restrained, but at
times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to
the many
Westerns he made. His career
spanned from 1925 until shortly before his death, and comprised
more than one hundred films.
During his lifetime, Cooper received five
Academy Award nominations for
Best Actor, winning twice, for
Sergeant York and
High Noon. He also received an
Honorary Award in 1961 from the
Academy.
Decades later, the
American Film
Institute named Cooper among the
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars, ranking 11th among
males from the
Classical
Hollywood cinema period. In 2003, his performances as
Will Kane in
High Noon,
Lou Gehrig in
The Pride of the Yankees, and
Alvin York in
Sergeant York made
the
AFI's 100
Years... 100 Heroes and
Villains list, all of them as heroes.
Childhood
Cooper was
born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana
, one of two sons of a Bedfordshire, England, farmer turned
American lawyer and judge, Charles Henry Cooper (1865-1946), and
Kent,
England
-born Alice (née Brazier) Cooper (1873-1967).
His mother hoped for their two sons to receive a better education
than that available in Montana and arranged for the boys to attend
Dunstable Grammar School in
Bedfordshire, England between
1910 and 1913.
Upon the outbreak of World War I, Mrs. Cooper brought her sons home
and enrolled them in a Bozeman, Montana
, high
school.
When Cooper was 13, he injured his hip in a car accident. He
returned to his parents' ranch near Helena to recuperate by
horseback riding at the recommendation of his doctor. Cooper
studied at Iowa's
Grinnell College
until the spring of 1924, but did not graduate. He had tried out,
unsuccessfully, for the college's drama club. He returned to
Helena, managing the ranch and contributing cartoons to the local
newspaper.
In 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme
Court
bench and moved with his wife to Los
Angeles
. Gary, unable to make a living as an
editorial cartoonist in Helena, joined them, moving there that same
year, reasoning that he "would rather starve where it was warm,
than to starve and freeze too."
Hollywood
Failing as a salesman of electric signs and theatrical curtains, as
a promoter for a local photographer and as an applicant for
newspaper work in Los Angeles, Cooper found work as an actor in
1925. He earned money as an "extra" in the motion picture industry,
usually cast as a cowboy. He is known to have had an uncredited
role in the 1925
Tom Mix Western,
Dick Turpin. The following
year, he had screen credit in a two-reeler,
Lightnin'
Wins, with actress
Eileen
Sedgwick as his leading lady.
After the release of this short film, Cooper accepted a long-term
contract with
Paramount Pictures.
He changed
his name to Gary in 1925, following the advice of casting director
Nan Collins, who felt it evoked the "rough, tough" nature of her
native Gary,
Indiana
.
"Coop," as he was called by his peers, went on to appear in over
100 films. He became a major star with his first sound picture,
The Virginian, in
1929. The lead in the screen adaptation of
A Farewell to Arms (1932) and the
title role in 1936's
Mr.
Deeds Goes to Town furthered his box office appeal. Cooper
was producer
David O. Selznick's first choice for the role of
Rhett Butler in the 1939 film
Gone with the
Wind. When Cooper turned down the role, he was
passionately against it. He is quoted as saying, "
Gone with the Wind is going
to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m glad it’ll be
Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his
nose, not me".
Alfred Hitchcock
wanted him to star in
Foreign Correspondent
(
1940) and
Saboteur (
1942). Cooper later admitted he had made a
"mistake" in turning down the director. For the former film,
Hitchcock cast look-alike
Joel McCrea
instead.
In 1942, Cooper won his first
Academy Award for Best Actor
for his performance as the title character in
Sergeant York.
Alvin York refused to authorize a movie about his
life unless Gary Cooper portrayed him.
In 1953, Cooper won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his
performance as Marshal Will Kane in
High
Noon, considered his finest role. Ill with an ulcer, he
wasn't present to receive his Academy Award in February 1953. He
asked
John Wayne to accept it on his
behalf, a bit of irony in light of Wayne's stated distaste for the
film.
Cooper continued to appear in films almost to the end of his life.
Among his later box office hits was his portrayal of a
Quaker farmer during the
American Civil War in
William Wyler's
Friendly Persuasion in 1956.
His final
motion picture was a British
film,
The Naked Edge (1961),
directed by Michael
Anderson. Among his final projects was narrating an
NBC documentary,
The Real West, in
which he helped clear up myths about famous Western figures.
Cooper appeared in live radio "remakes" of several of his
films.
Congressional testimony
In 1944, Cooper joined the
anti-communist Motion
Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. While
filming
Good Sam, he testified
before the
House
Un-American Activities Committee on October 23 1947,
characterized as a "friendly" witness. Asked if he had observed
"communistic influence in Hollywood", Cooper named no one in
particular but said he had "turned down quite a few scripts because
I thought they were tinged with communistic ideas"; he also said he
had heard statements such as "don't you think the
Constitution of the United States
is about a 150 years out of date?" and "perhaps this would be a
more efficient government without a Congress"— statements he
characterized as "very un-American." He also told the committee the
following:
- :Several years ago, when communism was more of a social
chit-chatter in parties for offices, and so on when communism
didn't have the implications that it has now, discussion of
communism was more open and I remember hearing statements from some
folks to the effect that the communistic system had a great many
features that were desirable. It offered the actors and
artists — in other words, the creative people — a special place in
government where we would be somewhat immune from the ordinary
leveling of income. And as I remember, some actor's name
was mentioned to me who had a house in Moscow which was very large
— he had three cars, and stuff, with his house being quite a bit
larger than my house in Beverly Hills at the time — and it looked
to me like a pretty phony come-on to us in the picture
business. From that time on, I could never take any of
this pinko mouthing very seriously, because I
didn't feel it was on the level.
Cooper's testimony occurred a month before the
Hollywood blacklist was
established.
Personal life
Cooper had high-profile relationships with actresses
Clara Bow,
Lupe
Vélez, and the American-born socialite-spy Countess Carla
Dentice di Frasso (née Dorothy Caldwell Taylor, formerly wife of
British pioneer
aviator Claude
Grahame-White). He is also believed to have had an affair with
actor Anderson Lawler, with whom he lived, and who introduced him
to Hollywood society.
On December 15, 1933, Cooper wed Veronica Balfe, (May 27 1913 -
February 16 2000), known as "Rocky."
Balfe was a New York
Roman Catholic socialite who had briefly
acted under the name of Sandra
Shaw. She appeared in the film
No Other Woman,
but her most widely seen role was in
King Kong, as the woman dropped
by Kong. Her third and final film was
Blood Money.
Her father was
governor of the New York Stock Exchange
, and her uncle was Cedric
Gibbons. During the 1930s she also became the California
state women's skeet
shooting champion. They had one child, Maria, now Maria
Cooper Janis, married to classical pianist
Byron Janis.
Eventually, Cooper's wife persuaded Cooper to convert to
Catholicism in 1958. After he was married, but prior to his
conversion, Cooper had affairs with several famous co-stars,
including
Marlene Dietrich,
Grace Kelly, and
Patricia Neal. He pressured Neal to have an
abortion in 1950, since fathering a child out of wedlock could have
destroyed his career. Cooper's daughter Maria, when she was a
little girl, famously spat at Neal, but many years later, the two
became friends. Cooper separated from his wife between 1951 and
1954.
Cooper was
friends with Ernest Hemingway and
spent many vacations with the writer in Sun Valley,
Idaho
.
Death from cancer
In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for
prostate cancer after it had spread to his
colon. It spread to his
lungs and bones shortly thereafter.
Cooper was too ill to attend the
Academy Awards ceremony in April 1961,
so his close friend
James
Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's
emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the
next day newspapers ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer." One
month later Cooper was dead, six days after his 60th
birthday.
Cooper
was interred in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery
in Culver City, California
. Years later, when his wife Veronica
remarried and moved to New York, she had Cooper's body moved to
Sacred Heart Cemetery,
Southampton,
New York
.
Legacy
- For
his contribution to the film industry, Cooper has a star on the
Hollywood
Walk of Fame
at 6243 Hollywood Blvd.
- In
1966, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of
Fame at the National Cowboy
& Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma
City, Oklahoma
.
- Cooper was mentioned in the lyrics to Irving Berlin's song "Puttin' on the Ritz": "Trying hard to
look like Gary Cooper, (super duper)".
- Charlton Heston often cited
Cooper as a childhood role model, and later worked with him on
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). Heston praised Cooper
for doing his own stunts despite his age and poor health.
- Cooper is mentioned by comedian Michael Palin on Monty
Python's
The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty
Python and the Holy Grail: "The lavatories here comprise
two free-standing fixtures and a twelve-inch enamel wall bar with
self-rinsing bar and auto sump grill, and were opened by Gary
Cooper in 1957."
- Cooper is frequently mentioned by Tony
Soprano, the main character of The
Sopranos, as the quintessential example of the Strong, Silent Type.
- Gary
Cooper's photograph from High Noon was
used on a famous poster for campaign before first free elections in
communist Poland
in
1989.
- The 1949 Ozu Yasujiro film Late Spring mentions that Noriko's soon-to-be
husband looks just like Gary Cooper, though he never appears on
screen.
- In September 2009, Cooper was featured on a commemorative U.S.
postage stamp.
Filmography
References
- Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New
York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, pp. 17-18
- Current Biography 1941, pp 170-71
- Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New
York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, pp. 22-23
- Actor Gary Cooper: Testimony to House Un-American
Activities Committee, from the CNN website for the Peabody Award-winning 1998
documentary Cold War,
- Current Biography 1941
- Profile of Cooper from Turner
Classic Movies
- Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New
York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, p. 25
- GoneMovie -> Biography Gary Cooper
- Paul Donnelley (June 1, 2003). Fade To Black: A Book Of
Movie Obituaries, 2nd Edition. Omnibus Press.
- Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New
York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, p. 252
- Swindell, Larry The Last Hero: A Biography of Gary
Cooper, New York: Doubleday, 1980, pp104-5
- Mann, William J. Behind the screen: how gays and lesbians
shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, Viking, 2001, pp105
- Lawrence, Jack They All Sang My Songs: The Life and Times
of Jack Lawrence, Barricade Books, 2004
- Shearer, Stephen Michael Patricia Neal: An Unquiet
Life (2006)
- Shearer, Stephen Michael. Patricia Neal: An Unquiet
Life, Kentucky, University Press of Kentucky, 2006, p. 88
- Janis, Maria Cooper. Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter
Remembers. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: New York, NY (1999), page
167.
-
http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2008/pr08_136.htm
External links