Gary Cooper
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| Gary Cooper | |||||||||||
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 Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952) |
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| Born | Frank James Cooper May 7, 1901 Helena, Montana, U.S. |
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| Died | May 13, 1961 (aged 60) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
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| Years active | 1923-1961 | ||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Veronica Balfe (1933-1961) | ||||||||||
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Frank James “Gary” Cooper (May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American two-time Academy Award-winning film actor of English heritage. His career spanned from 1924 until 1961, the year of his death. In that timespan he made one hundred films. 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 for the many Westerns he made.
Cooper received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, winning twice, for Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Honorary Award from the Academy in 1961. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 11.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] 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, and Kent, England-born Alice (née Brazier) Cooper.[1] His mother hoped for their two sons to receive a better education than that available in rough-hewn Montana and arranged for the boys to attend Dunstable School in England between 1910 and 1913. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Mrs. Cooper brought her sons home and enrolled young Frank in a Bozeman, Montana, high school.
When he was 13, Cooper injured his hip in an automobile accident. He returned to the ranch his parents owned near Helena to recuperate by horseback riding, at the recommendation of his doctor. Cooper started college at Montana Wesleyan (now defunct) in Helena[citation needed], then transferred to Iowa's Grinnell College, where he tried out, unsuccessfully, for the Drama Club. He attended until the spring of 1924 but did not graduate. [2] He then returned to Helena, managing the ranch and contributing cartoons to the local paper. In 1924, Cooper's father left the Montana Supreme Court bench and moved with his wife to Los Angeles. Their son, unable to make a living as an editorial cartoonist in Helena, joined them, [3] reasoning that he "would rather starve where it was warm, than to starve and freeze too" [4]
[edit] Hollywood
Failing as a salesman of both electric signs and theatrical curtains, as a promoter for a local photographer, and as an applicant for newspaper work in Los Angeles,[5] the 6 ft 3 in (190 cm) Cooper found he could earn money as an "extra" in the motion picture industry, usually cast as a cowboy; he is known to have been in an uncredited role in the 1925 Tom Mix Western, Dick Turpin.[6] A year later, he had screen credit in a two-reeler, Lightnin' Wins, with actress Eileen Sedgewick as his leading lady. After the release of this short film, he 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.[7]
"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.[8] 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".[9][10] 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, he 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.[11]
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 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.
[edit] Private life
In October 1947, Cooper testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He did not name names, but was considered a friendly witness. Although Cooper was politically conservative, his vague, evasive statements raised questions about his agreement with the proceedings.
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).
On December 15, 1933, Cooper wed Veronica Balfe, (May 27, 1913 - February 16, 2000). 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 movie 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 Champion. They had one child, Maria, now Maria Cooper Janis, married to classical pianist Byron Janis.
Eventually, his wife persuaded Cooper to become a Roman Catholic 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. 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.
He was friends with Ernest Hemingway, and spent many vacations with the writer in the winter wonderland of Sun Valley, Idaho.
In 1961, Cooper died of prostate cancer six days after his 60th birthday, and was interred in Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Culver City, California. Years later, his body was moved to Sacred Heart Cemetery, Southampton, New York.[12] He had undergone surgery for prostate cancer which had spread to his colon in the previous year, but as there were no means of monitoring the progress of cancer in those days it then spread to his lungs and then, most painfully, to his bones. 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 all over the world ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer". One month later Cooper was dead.
[edit] Legacy
For his contribution to the film industry, Gary 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. His name has also been immortalized in Irving Berlin's song "Puttin' on the Ritz" with the line, "Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper, (super duper)".
Charlton Heston often cited Cooper as a childhood role model, and later got to work with him on The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). Heston praised Cooper for doing his own stunts despite his age and poor health. He has been briefly mentioned a few times on the HBO drama, The Sopranos, when the main character, Tony Soprano, remarks that he admired Gary Cooper for being the strong, silent type.
Morgan Freeman while being interviewed on The Adam Carolla Show in 2007, stated that watching Cooper as a young man has inspired him to act.
On the list AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains chosen by American Film Institute in 2003, Gary Cooper is the only actor to appear three times; in all three he appeared as a hero.
In Life on Mars, a British television series in the environment of 1970s policing DCI Gene Hunt (Phillip Glenister) referred to Gary Cooper as a god amongst men.
[edit] Filmography
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- Note: imdb.com has speculated, but has not confirmed, that Cooper may have been an uncredited extra in the 1923 film The Last Hour. Other sources indicate that Cooper was a student at Grinnell College in 1923, and did not move to California until 1925.
[edit] Short subjects
- The Spider's Net (1924)
- The Slippery Pearls (1931)
- The Voice of Hollywood No. 13 (1932)
- Hollywood on Parade (1932)
- The Hollywood Gad-About (1934)
- Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove (1935)
- La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935)
- Lest We Forget (1937)
- Screen Snapshots: Seeing Hollywood (1940)
- Screen Snapshots Series 19, No. 6 (1940)
- Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 3 (1942)
- Memo for Joe (1944)
- Snow Carnival (1949) (narrator)
- Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc. (1949)
- Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Premiere (1955)
- Screen Snapshots: Glamorous Hollywood (1958)
[edit] Notes
- ^ 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
- ^ Current Biography 1941
- ^ Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, pp. 22-23
- ^ imdb.com
- ^ Arce, Hector. Gary Cooper: An Intimate Biography, New York, William Morrow & Co., 1979, p. 25
- ^ Selznick, David O. (2000). Memo from David O. Selznick. New York: Modern Library, 172-173. ISBN 0-375-75531-4.
- ^ 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
- ^ Maria Cooper Janis, Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: New York, NY (1999), page 167
[edit] External links
- Gary Cooper at the Internet Movie Database
- Gary Cooper at the TCM Movie Database
- Find-A-Grave profile for Gary Cooper
- Photographs of Gary Cooper
- Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Fredric March for Death of a Salesman |
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama 1953 for High Noon |
Succeeded by Spencer Tracy for The Actress |
| Preceded by Charles Chaplin for The Great Dictator |
NYFCC Award for Best Actor 1941 for Sergeant York |
Succeeded by James Cagney for Yankee Doodle Dandy |
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| Persondata | |
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| NAME | Cooper, Gary |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cooper, Frank James |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Helena, Montana, U.S. |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 13, 1961 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
