GARY COOPER

From virtual-history.com

Postcards: Ross Verlag
From virtual-history.com

"Dad was a true Westerner, and I take after him", Gary Cooper told people who wanted to know more about his life before Hollywood. Dad was Charles Henry Cooper, who left his native England at 19, became a lawyer and later a Montana State Supreme Court justice. In 1906, when Gary was 5, his dad bought the Seven-Bar-Nine, a 600-acre ranch that had originally been a land grant to the builders of the railroad through that part of Montana. In 1910, Gary's mother, who had been ill, was advised to take a long sea voyage by her doctor. She went to England and stayed there until the United States entered World War I. Gary and his older brother Arthur stayed with their mother and went to school in England for seven years. Too young to go to war, Gary spent the war years working on his father's ranch. "Getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning in the dead of winter to feed 450 head of cattle and shoveling manure at 40 below ain't romantic", said the man who would take the Western to the top of its genre in High Noon (1952). So well liked was Cooper that he aroused little envy when, in 1939, the U.S. Treasury Department said that he was the nation's top wage earner. That year he earned $482,819. This tall, silent hero was the American ideal for many people of his generation. Ernest Hemingway who lived his novels before he wrote them, was happy to have Gary Cooper play his protagonists in A Farewell to Arms (1932) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
(Copyright © 1990-2008 IMDb.com, Inc.)
Strong and silent with steely gray eyes, Gary Cooper walked out of the wide open West to become one of Hollywood's most rugged symbols of masculinity. From the 1920s through the '50s, Coop played extraordinary heroes and ordinary Americans.
In real life, Cooper was a true Westerner, not merely an onscreen cowboy. He was born on a Montana ranch and, after learning how to ride and rope cattle, he was sent off to attend a prestigious school in England. Soon the taciturn boy came to embody the age-old struggle between mannered culture and the untamed frontier.
As a young man, Cooper aspired to become a political cartoonist, but after having trouble securing work, he found quick cash as a cowboy extra in silent movies. His refined ruggedness attracted the attention of the lusty 'It' girl, Clara Bow. Bow kept her handsome hunk close at hand, and Coop made brief appearances in It (1927) and Wings (1927). By the coming of sound, Bow's career was on the decline as Cooper was becoming a favorite of audiences after his first talking picture, The Virginian (1929). With his laid-back western twang, Cooper was ideally cast as an American hero, an Everyman that everyone could identify with and look up to.
-by Eremy Geltzer
(TM & © 2008 Turner Classic Movies, A Time Warner Company)

Greiling Serie C (1951)
From virtual-history.com

Frank James “Gary” Cooper (May 7 1901 – May 13 1961) was an American film actor and iconic star. 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.

The Sergeant York Review
From homevideos.com

The HIGH NOON Review
From homevideos.com

If the Academy gave out an award for the best performance by an inanimate object in 1952, the clocks in the overheated Western melodrama High Noon would have won in a landslide. A drinking game could be devised where participants down a shot every time a character in the film glances at a watch or a clock to reiterate that time is running out for anxious sheriff Gary Cooper, whose moment of reckoning is 50, no 40, no 30, no 20 minutes away. Yet despite the preponderance of clock-watching in the film, it's curiously lacking in dramatic tension until a justly famous climax. For the threat Cooper faces seldom emerges as anything more than abstract. Sticks and stones may break bones but ideological abstractions will never hurt you. In an Oscar-winning turn, Cooper plays a tormented lawman in the midst of the most dramatic 90 minutes of his...
Review by Nathan Rabin
June 11th, 2008
(Copyright © 1990-2008 IMDb.com, Inc.)
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. He 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).
-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Photographs of Gary Cooper
From virtual-history.com

Gary Cooper - Wikimedia Commons
Photographs and film images

MORE of Gary Cooper

Honorary Awards:
1953 Won Oscar Best Actor for: High Noon (1952)
1944 Nominated Best Actor for: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
1943 Nominated Best Actor for: Pride of the Yankees, The (1942)
1942 Won Oscar Best Actor for: Sergeant York (1941)
1937 Nominated Best Actor for: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Selected Movies:
High Noon (1952)
Sergeant York (1941)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Meet John Doe (1941)
Pride of the Yankees, The (1942)
Westerner, The (1940)
Ball of Fire (1941)

Family:
FATHER: Charles Henry Cooper. Lawyer, rancher, judge. British-born; moved to the USA at age 19; settled in Montana; practiced law and eventually served on the Montana State Supreme Court; purchased the Seven-Bar-Nine ranch c. 1906; died in 1946.
MOTHER: Alice Cooper. British; returned to England with her two sons in 1910, purportedly for health reasons; returned to the USA after seven years during WWI; survived him.
BROTHER: Arthur Cooper. Born in 1895; survived him.
DAUGHTER: Maria Veronica Balfe Cooper. Author. Married to composer Byron Janis c. 1966 and from whom she separated in 1996.
COMPANION: Clara Bow. Actor. Appeared together in "It" (1927) and three other movies; had relationship in the late 1920s.
COMPANION: Anderson Lawler. Actor. Contract player with Paramount; lived together in 1929.
COMPANION: Lupe Velez. Actor. Co-starred with Cooper in "Wolf Song" (1929) and shared a Laurel Canyon hideaway with him; his mother disapproved and came between the pair.
COMPANION: Evelyn Brent. Actor. Cooper's mother said, "Evelyn has been good to Gary; she has given him poise, she has taught him to think; her influence has been excellent, and I will always regard her with affection and gratitude"; the pair worked together on "Beau Sabreur" (1926) and "Paramount on Parade" (1930).
COMPANION: Countess Dorothy di Frasso. American-born daughter of multi-millionaire Bertrand L Taylor.
WIFE: Veronica Balfe. Actor, socialite. Born c. 1912 introduced to society in 1931; met Cooper when she was a teenager living at the home of Cedric Gibbons and Dolores Del Rio; married on December 15, 1933; separated briefly in 1951; reconciled and remained together until his death in 1961; acted in only two films ("King Kong" and "Blood Money", both 1933); died on February 18, 2000.
COMPANION: Marlene Dietrich. Actor. Met during filming of "Morocco" (1930); Cooper's wife served Dietrich with a writ during divorce proceedings; writ later dropped.
COMPANION: Patricia Neal. Actor. Appeared in three films together in 1949-50, including "The Fountainhead"; had affair which led to Cooper's separation from his wife; relationship ended c. 1951.
(Source: TM & © 2008 Turner Classic Movies, A Time Warner Company)

A large photo album highlights this salute to Gary Cooper which also contains Mr. Cooper's filmography and quotes:
A Gary Cooper Biography
The Gary Cooper Filmography
A Gary Cooper Photograph Album
Gary Cooper Quotation Page
From Gary Cooper web pages © 1997 by Jerry Lansche

PAGES ON THE WEB:
Gary Cooper - Coop Forever
geocities.com

My Gary Cooper Pages
thegoldenyears.org

Added by: Ray Langert
8/10/2001
From findagrave.com