Gary Cooper
Promotional image for Meet John Doe (1941)
Born	Frank James Cooper (1901-05-07)May 7, 1901 Helena, Montana, U.S.
Died	May 13, 1961(1961-05-13) (aged 60) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1925–1961
Spouse	Veronica Balfe (m. 1933–1961) «start: (1933)–end+1: (1962)»"Marriage: Veronica Balfe to Gary Cooper" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Gary_Cooper) (his death)
Children	Maria Cooper Janis

Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, (May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American film actor.^[1] He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made. He also excelled in sophisticated, screwball romantic comedies. His career spanned from 1925 until shortly before his death in 1961, and comprised more than one hundred films.

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.

Decades later, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars, ranking 11th among males from the Classical Hollywood cinema period. In 2003, his performances as Will Kane in High Noon, Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees, and Alvin York in Sergeant York made the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list, all of them as heroes.

Early life[link]

Cooper was born in Helena, Montana, one of two sons of an English immigrant couple, Alice (née Brazier; 1873–1967) and Charles Henry Cooper (1865–1946). His father was a farmer from Bedfordshire, who later became an American lawyer and judge, and his mother was from Kent.^[2] His mother hoped for their two sons to receive a better education than that available in Montana and arranged for the boys to attend Dunstable Grammar School in Bedfordshire, England, between 1910 and 1913.^[3][4] Upon the outbreak of World War I, Cooper's mother brought her sons home and enrolled them in a Bozeman, Montana, high school.^[5]

When Cooper was 13, he injured his hip in a car accident. He returned to his parents' ranch near Helena to recuperate by horseback riding at the recommendation of his doctor. Cooper studied at Iowa's Grinnell College until the spring of 1924, but did not graduate. He had tried out, unsuccessfully, for the college's drama club.^[6] He returned to Helena, managing the ranch and contributing cartoons to the local newspaper. 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,^[7] moving there that same year,^[8] reasoning that he "would rather starve where it was warm, than to starve and freeze too."^[6]

Career[link]

Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town with Jean Arthur (1936)

Gary Cooper and Joan Fontaine holding their Oscars at an Academy Awards after party in 1942.

Failing as a salesman of electric signs and theatrical curtains, as a promoter for a local photographer and as an applicant for newspaper work in Los Angeles,^[7] Cooper found work as an actor in 1925.^[8] He earned money as an "extra" in the motion picture industry, usually cast as a cowboy. He is known to have had an uncredited role in the 1925 Tom Mix Western, Dick Turpin.^[9] The following year, he had screen credit in a two-reeler, Lightnin' Wins, with actress Eileen Sedgwick as his leading lady.

After the release of this short film, Cooper accepted a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. He changed his name to Gary in 1925, following the advice of casting director Nan Collins,^[10] who felt it evoked the "rough, tough" nature of her native Gary, Indiana.^[11]

"Coop," as he was called by his peers, went on to appear in over 100 films. Cooper broke through in a supporting role in Wings (1927), the 1st silent film, and film in general, to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, following that with Nevada (1927) co-starring Thelma Todd and William Powell, based on the Zane Gray novel, which was remade in 1944 as an early Robert Mitchum vehicle, the only time Cooper and Mitchum played the same role. He became a major star with his first sound picture, The Virginian (1929) opposite Walter Huston as the villainous Trampas. The Spoilers appeared the following year with Betty Compson, which was remade in 1942 with Compson lookalike Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne in Cooper's role. Cooper followed this action film with his own Dietrich film entitled Morocco (1930) in which he played a Foreign Legionnaire. Devil and the Deep (1932) featured Cary Grant in a supporting role with Talullah Bankhead and Cooper in the leads alongside Charles Laughton. The following year, Cooper was the second lead in the sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch comedy production of Noël Coward's Design for Living. He was billed under Fredric March in the kind of fast-talking role Cooper never played again after Cary Grant staked out the light comedy leading man field with The Awful Truth four years later. The screen adaptation of A Farewell to Arms (1932), directed by Frank Borzage, and the title role in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) furthered Cooper's 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.^[12] 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".^[13][14] 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.