Gary Cooper publicity photo c.1929 #1
by David Lee Guss
Title
Gary Cooper publicity photo c.1929 #1
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Gary Cooper (1901-1961) looks even prettier than his female co-stars at the dawn (1929) of the talkie era.
But his face aged badly with time even looking older than his years. He was 27 years older than Grace Kelly in "High Noon" and 28 with Audrey Hepburn in "Love in the Afternoon." And he looked it.
Many of the top stars of silent pictures failed in the talkies. The new stars, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, Walter Huston and Spencer Tracy, among many lesser lights all came from the stage.
Not so with "Coop." The camera loved the Montana cowboy turned actor.
The Shakespearean trained Charlton Heston (1923-2008) writes about Coop in his 1995 autobiography "In the Arena." They appeared together in Cooper's second to last movie "The Wreck of the Mary Deare." (1959)
Heston recounts looking at Cooper instead of himself in the nighttime screenings of the footage. Heston feels Coop was underrated as an actor, especially his playing comedy.
Cooper's director in the critically lambasted "The Fountainhead" (1949), King Vidor (1894-1982), is not so charitable. He felt that the actor was overrated, gaining a critical reputation of excellence because he was "thinking hard about the next line."
Cooper had been badly miscast as the egocentric architect Howard Roark in the Ayn Rand scripted film of her still selling novel.
{NOTE: Ironically Charlton Heston had turned down the Gary Cooper role of Will Kane in "High Noon," for which Coop received his second Oscar.
Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) had turned down the role of Ben Hur which Heston played, winning his only Oscar.}
Like Duke Cooper was an arch conservative, even testifying in 1947 before the House Un-American Activities Committee saying, "I couldn't take any of this pinko mouthing very seriously because I didn't feel it was on the level."
@2009 David Lee Guss Film homage, Gary Cooper, #1, 1929-2009
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April 18th, 2013
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