Vintage Movie Reviews:Gary Cooper

The movies' archetypal "strong, silent type," this tall, laconic leading man defined Hollywood heroism in a way most other actors never could. Many of his characters, whether by choice or design, were cut from distinctly American cloth: slow to anger, predisposed to peaceful solutions, but unafraid to use force rooted in justice. Although the softspoken Cooper was a college graduate (and briefly, a newspaper cartoonist), his saddle skills-hard won in his Montana youth-actually got him into movies, first as an extra in numerous Hollywood Westerns, then as an eleventh-hour replacement for the second male lead in Henry King's The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926), in which the lanky young man managed to steal many of the scenes he shared with matinee idol Ronald Colman-a notinconsiderable feat that led Paramount Pictures to sign him.

Initially he supported the studio's top stars-Clara Bow in It (1927) and Children of Divorce (1927), Bow, Richard Arlen, and Buddy Rogers in the Oscarwinning Wings (1927)-but made his own mark as a top-billed star of Paramount's program Westerns, including 1927's Arizona Bound, Nevada and The Last Outlaw. He was paired with Colleen Moore in Lilac Time and Nancy Carroll in Shopworn Angel two successful 1929 dramas set during World War 1. Talkies found Cooper refining his naturally taciturn Western character; in The Virginian (1929), he rarely spoke unless he had something to say, including the famous line, "When you call me that, smile" delivered to swearing badman Walter Huston. In 1930 he starred in The Texan and A Man From Wyoming (as well as taking a cameo in the all-star Paramount on Parade) before being teamed with exotic Marlene Dietrich in Morocco a scorching desert romance that found him in Legionnaire's garb, and led him away from Westerns. Although Cooper frequently essayed roles that called for him to be shy or reticent, his offscreen conduct vitiated that image; his affairs with Bow, Lupe Velez, and others were both numerous and well known.

Cooper played a hard-boiled gunman in City Streets (1931), a gangster story written by Dashiell Hammett; his performance suggests that he'd have been right at home playing one of Hammett's pulp-fiction detectives. I Take This Woman, His Women (both 1931), The Devil and the Deep and A Farewell to Arms (both 1932, the lastnamed a Hemingway adaptation costarring Helen Hayes) refined and reinforced his new image as a romantic leading man. And, while ostensibly miscast as an artist in Ben Hecht's spicy adaptation of Noël Coward's witty Design for Living (1933, directed by Ernst Lubitsch), Coop acquit ted himself admirably. It's unfortunate that he didn't choose to appear in more comedies, because he certainly had the knack. He continued to top-line some of Paramount's most successful films of the 1930s, including The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Desire and The General Died at Dawn (both 1936), before going to Columbia to star as small-town sage Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), one of Frank Capra's best populist comedies and one of Cooper's signature roles; it earned him his first Oscar nomination.

Back at Paramount he played a romanticized Wild Bill Hickok in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936) and starred in Souls at Sea (1937) before tackling (most improbably) the title character in The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), continuing a working relationship with producer Sam Goldwyn begun with The Wedding Night (1935). He lapsed back into "shucks, ma'am" mode for Goldwyn's formula comedy The Cowboy and the Lady pleasantly paired with Merle Oberon. It fared better than Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), a rare misfire for Lubitsch (working from a Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script, no less). Beau Geste (1939) saw him back in form; although hardly the type to play an aristocratic young Englishman who joins the Foreign Legion to save his family from disgrace, Cooper cut a dashing figure in the distinctive Legionnaire uniform, and the surefire remake of the 1926 film was a solid hit. Two more Goldwyn-produced efforts, The Real Glory (1939) and The Westerner (1940, in which he matched wits with Walter Brennan's Judge Roy Bean), preceded Cooper's return to DeMille for Northwest Mounted Police (1940), a robust if somewhat silly Technicolor actioner.

Cooper's next four films set a highwater mark in screen acting-and sheer starpower-seldom (if ever) equaled since. He played an idealistic hobo turned media hero in Frank Capra's bittersweet Meet John Doe (1941), then portrayed real-life pacifist-turned-WW1 hero Alvin York in Sergeant York later that year, winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Ball of Fire (also 1941, a Goldwyn picture directed by Howard Hawks) showed he hadn't forgotten how to play comedy; as one of the prissy pro fessors who enlists wisecracking burlesque dancer Barbara Stanwyck to help them with a slang encyclopedia, Cooper showed himself to be a terrific straight man. And The Pride of the Yankees (1942, also for Goldwyn), featured him as baseball great Lou Gehrig (then recently deceased) in a touching, warm biopic that yielded another Oscar nomination.

He earned another Oscar nod for his hardbitten performance in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on the novel by his friend Ernest Hemingway, but his next few vehicles, while certainly pleasant, suggested that he might be marking time: The Story of Dr. Wassell, Casanova Brown (both 1944, the former directed by Ce- cil B. DeMille), Along Came Jones (1945, which he also produced), Saratoga Trunk (1945), Cloak and Dagger (1946), Unconquered (1947), and Good Sam (1948). Cooper was riveting as the iconoclastic architect in The Fountainhead (1949), an ambitious but middling Ayn Rand adaptation. More routine films followed-Task Force (1949), Bright Leaf, Dallas (both 1950), and You're in the Navy Now (1951) among them-before an aging, wearylooking Cooper assumed what may be his greatest role, that of the embattled marshal abandoned by the townspeople he spent years protecting, in High Noon (1952), a controversial film that was at once both the epitome and the antithesis of the "traditional" Western. The Academy presented him with another Oscar for his sterling performance.

In the Indian Summer of his career, Cooper starred in a number of meritorious productions that used his age as an asset-including The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Love in the Afternoon (1957, paired romantically with Audrey Hepburn and directed by Billy Wilder), Man of the West (1958), and The Hanging Tree (1959)-but his energies seemed to wane with each passing film. The Naked Edge (1961), a routine thriller shot in England, showed a listless Cooper just going through the motions; it proved to be his last film. In April 1961 he won a special, career-achievement Academy Award, which was accepted by his friend James Stewart. By that time a cancer-riddled Cooper was too ill to accept it. A month later he was dead.

"Gary Cooper-The Pride of the Yankees (1942)"



"Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in a scene from Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1932)"



Later,
Kenaz