Gary Cooper
Some people are famous for 15 minutes, others are famous to 15 people but it’s only a chosen few who get to be legends of the Silver Screen. Each month, Jo Mama selects a star and celebrates their life and work. This month: Gary Cooper. Illustration by Leonie Woods.
When Gary Copper was presented with a special Academy award shortly before his death in May 1961 everyone felt he deserved it. For 40 years Cooper was both a great actor and a great star. Cooper never played the bad guy because he was born to play handsome cowboys. Cooper’s eyes were amazing at displaying emotion and Copper was great at portraying someone deep in thought. As many others have pointed out over the years, no other actor was better at playing the part of the man who “has to do what he has to do.” According to YouGov America, despite dying 60 years ago, Gary Cooper is still considered one of most popular Americans of all time and disliked by almost no one.
I've read The Gary Cooper Story by George Carpozi Jnr and found some nice quotes like this one ...
It’s a hard thing for a man to talk about but I guess it boils down to this. You find out what people expect from your type of character, and then give them what they want. That way an actor never seems unnatural or affected no matter what role he plays. Ever since I have been able to pick my own roles, I have refused to do a movie that doesn’t excite me. I figure that if it will excite me – I’m a very ordinary , average guy – it will at least interest most other people.
Throughout his book, Carpozi refers to the Hollywood Great as Coop I’ve decided to pinch this idea and for the rest of this tribute I will also say Coop instead of Gary Cooper.
In 1936 Coop delighted everyone with Mr Deeds Goes To Town directed by Frank Capra. The film is about an innocent but sturdy citizen (Longfellow Deeds) who inherits millions and is discredited when he announces he plans to give the money away to help poor people. It’s a soppy, daft, dated film but also rather lovely. It’s also the only film Coop makes in which you get to see him play the tuba.
Legend has it Ernest Hemingway had Coop in mind when he created the character of Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. When the novel was turned it into a film in 1943 it won an Oscar for best movie. Coop was great as an aging playboy in the classic rom com Love in the Afternoon (directed by Billy Wilder in 1957) and the role earned Cooper his first nomination as Best Actor.
Coop’s best film was High Noon which was directed by the Austrian born Fred Zinnemann in 1952. The film tells the memorable story of clean-cut Will Kane, a retired marshal whose recently married a Quaker. Kane asks the townspeople to help him stand up to a posse of gunmen arriving on the 12 O’clock but everyone let’s him down forcing him to do his duty on his own. The film is fantastically tense and gripping. A perfect movie.
Gary was not Coop’s real name. On his birth certificate it says: Frank Cooper. Coop’s father was called Charles and he was born in Dunstable, England in 1865 and if you go to Grove Park, Dunstable today you’ll see an enormous Wetherspoon’s pub called, The Gary Cooper. Many people dream of living in Hollywood but Coop tried it and wasn't impressed.
Nobody in Hollywood is normal. Absolutely nobody. And they have such a vicious attitude toward one another. They say much worse things about each other than outsiders say about them, and nobody has any real friends.
When I read this quote it occurred to me Coop would probably have preferred a night in Dunstable, Bedford chatting to some normal people than hob knobbing with fellow Hollywood stars in L.A.
