|
Filmography
Biography
American actor Gary Cooper was born on the Montana ranch of his wealthy
father, and educated in a prestigious school in England -- a dichotomy
that may explain how the adult Cooper was able to combine the ruggedness
of the frontiersman with the poise of a cultured gentleman. Injured in
an auto accident while attending Wesleyan College, he convalesced on his
dad's ranch, perfecting the riding skills that would see him through
many a future Western film.
After trying to make a living at his chosen avocation of political
cartooning, Cooper was encouraged by two friends to seek employment as a
cowboy extra in movies. Agent Nan Collins felt she could get more
prestigious work for the handsome, gangling Cooper, and, in 1926, she
was instrumental in obtaining for the actor an important role in The
Winning of Barbara Worth. Movie star Clara Bow
also took an interest in Cooper, seeing to it that he was cast in a
couple of her films. Cooper really couldn't act at this point, but he
applied himself to his work in a brief series of silent Westerns for his
home studio, Paramount Pictures, and, by 1929, both his acting
expertise and his popularity had soared. Cooper's first talking-picture
success was The Virginian
(1929), in which he developed the taciturn, laconic speech patterns
that became fodder for every impressionist on radio, nightclubs, and
television.
Cooper alternated between tie-and-tails parts in Design for
Living (1933) and he-man adventurer roles in The
Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) for most of the 1930s; in 1941, he
was honored with an Oscar for Sergeant York,
a part for which he was the personal choice of the real-life title
character, World War I hero Alvin York. One year later, Cooper scored in
another film biography, Pride
of the Yankees. As baseball great Lou Gehrig,
the actor was utterly convincing (despite the fact that he'd never
played baseball and wasn't a southpaw like Gehrig),
and left few dry eyes in the audiences with his fade-out "luckiest man
on the face of the earth" speech. In 1933, Cooper married socialite Veronica
Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw,
enjoyed a short-lived acting career. Too old for World War II service,
Cooper gave tirelessly of his time in hazardous South Pacific
personal-appearance tours.
Ignoring the actor's indirect participation in the communist
witch-hunt of the 1940s, Hollywood held Cooper in the highest regard as
an actor and a man. Even those co-workers who thought that Cooper wasn't
exerting himself at all when filming were amazed to see how, in the
final product, Cooper was actually outacting everyone else, albeit in a
subtle, unobtrusive manner. Consigned mostly to Westerns by the 1950s
(including the classic High Noon
[1952]), Cooper retained his box-office stature. Privately, however, he
was plagued with painful, recurring illnesses, and one of them developed
into lung cancer. Discovering the extent of his sickness, Cooper kept
the news secret, although hints of his condition were accidentally
blurted out by his close friend Jimmy
Stewart during the 1961 Academy Awards ceremony, where Stewart
was accepting a career-achievement Oscar for Cooper. One month later,
and less than two months after his final public appearance as the
narrator of a TV documentary on the "real West," Cooper died; to fans
still reeling from the death of Clark Gable
six months earlier, it seemed that Hollywood's Golden Era had suddenly
died, as well. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
|
