Biography

Gary Cooper

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Overview

Born
May 7, 1901 · Helena, Montana, USA
Died
May 13, 1961 · Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (prostate cancer)
Birth name
Frank James Cooper
Nicknames
- Coop
- Cowboy Cooper
- The Montana Mule
- Studs
Height
6′ 3″ (1.91 m)

Biography

Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two-reeler by the independent producer Hans Tiesler . Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings (1927), It (1927), and other films.
- IMDb mini biography by: Dave Curbow

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Roles in westerns
Slow, very deliberate delivery

Trivia

According to James Garner's autobiography Cooper developed the habit of paying for everything by check, knowing that people would keep it for his signature and never cash it (it was a trick also used by Pablo Picasso, who once said he had seldom paid for anything--from lunches to cars to houses--because of it.
Was close friends with Ernest Hemingway for 20 years. Hemingway shot himself a month after Cooper's death.
In 1925 he befriended another young, struggling, would-be actor named Walter Brennan. At one point they were even appearing as a team at casting offices, and although Cooper emerged in major and leading roles first, they would work together in the good years, too. Most memorably they starred in The Westerner (1940) together, where the general critical consensus was that Brennan's underplayed performance as Judge Roy Bean had stolen the film from Cooper.
After James Stewart revealed to the world that Cooper was dying of cancer, messages poured in from such friends and well-wishers as Pope John XXIII, former Vice President Richard Nixon, Henry Fonda, Pablo Picasso, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Princess Grace (Grace Kelly) of Monaco, John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bob Hope, Henry Hathaway, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer, William Goetz, Mary Livingstone (Mrs. Jack Benny) and Jack Benny, Gloria Stewart (Mrs. James Stewart) and James Stewart, Charles Feldman and Constance and Jerry Wald. The newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy called from Washington and couldn't get through on the busy Cooper phone, but kept calling. He got through on the second day to talk to Gary for seven minutes.
In May 1931, after finishing I Take This Woman (1931), the combination of exhaustion, physical illness and the conflict between his possessive mother and jealous mistress led to a nervous breakdown. He had been working 14 to 16 hours a day, sometimes 23, making one film by day and another by night. He suffered from anemia and jaundice, and his weight dropped 30 pounds to a dangerously low 148 lbs.

Quotes

Until I came along all the leading men were handsome, but luckily they wrote a lot of stories about the fellow next door.
If you hit the mark with two out of every five movies you'll keep the wheels of the cycle turning.
To get folks to like you, I figured you had to sort of be their ideal. I don't mean a handsome knight riding a white horse, but a fellow who answered the description of a right guy.
People ask me how come you've been around so long. Well, it's through playing the part of Mr Average Joe American.
[in 1931] I haven't read a half a dozen books in my life.