eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Gary Cooper was born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana, USA in 1901. His mother was English born, and he and his brother were sent to an English boarding school to be educated when they were young, but when WWI broke out, they were brought home.
His father was a judge who also owned a ranch, and Cooper went to college, but did not graduate, and ran his father's ranch afterwards, and also drew some cartoons for the local paper. When he was 23 his father left the bench and sold the ranch and his parents moved to California, and because Cooper could not make a living at his cartooning, he moved with them.
After a year of odd jobs, he started getting extra roles in movie westerns. He signed a contract with Paramount, and changed his first name to Gary. Cooper got progressively better roles in silent movies, and had romances with some of his more famous co-stars, including Clara Bow and Lupe Velez.
In 1927, he played a small, but important role of a doomed flyer in Wings, which was a major breakthrough for him, and led to many better starring roles the following year. In 1929 he starred as the title character in The Virginian, which was made in both a silent and sound version.
He had become the quintessential "strong, silent type". and women everywhere swooned over him, and men wanted to be like him. In 1930 he starred in Morocco, opposite Marlene Dietrich, and in 1932 he was hand picked by Hemingway to star in A Farewell to Arms, and in 1936 he starred in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
He had his pick of movies, and many of the ones he turned down were then offered to similar actor Joel McCrea, who basically lived in Cooper's shadow throughout the 1930s. He turned down the lead role in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (it started out as a Mr. Deeds sequel), and James Stewart got the role. He turned down the lead in Stagecoach, and that part made John Wayne a major star after toiling in B-westerns for many years.
His greatest blunder was turned down the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. He said at the time, "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"!
In 1941, Alvin York, the most decorated soldier in WWI, finally agreed to a movie being made of his life (to help recruiting efforts in WWII), but he insisted that only Cooper could play him, and Cooper won his first Oscar for that role. The next year Lou Gehrig tragically died, and Cooper played him superbly, and his "Today I am the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech is one of the great moments in movie history!
He was Robert Jordan in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Ayn Rand picked him to play Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. In 1952 he had one of the finest roles of his career, as Will Kane in High Noon, and he won a second Oscar. In 1960 he got prostate cancer, and he died the following year, at 60 years of age.
There will never be another star like Gary Cooper! He stayed a major leading actor for 25 solid years, starring in around 90 movies, and during that time he was the lead in important movies of all sorts, because so many writers, directors, and co-stars wanted him for their star! I highly recommend all the movies noted above, but you really can't go wrong with any Gary Cooper movie, for his presence elevated even his lesser movies into something worth watching! AND Fred MacMurray was a very successful actor from the 1920s through the 1970s. He was a star athlete at his high school, and he also played saxophone, and had his own band called "Mac's Melody Boys", where he also sang. He went to college to study music and he played with a dance band. He went to Hollywood and joined the California Collegians, a vaudeville band. In 1930, the band traveled to New York and played for Broadway shows. A Paramount agent saw him and he had a screen test, and appeared in some movies in the early 1930s, and he co-starred with Claudette Colbert in "The Gilded Lily" in 1935, which made him a star. In the late 1930s, he was a leading man in mostly romantic comedies. In the 1940s, he appeared in some great film noir movies, including "Double Indemnity". In the 1950s, he had a memorable role in "The Caine Mutiny", and in 1960, he had a major role in Billy Wilder's "The Apartment". He then made a massive career shift, starring in Walt Disney movies, and also starring in the TV sitcom "My Three Sons", which he stayed with for 12 years. He passed away in 1991 at the age of 83.

Important Added Info: Note that this great candid still shows two of Paramount's biggest stars talking together while they were filming different movies (Cooper was making "North West Mounted Police" and MacMurray "Rangers of Fortune"). Note that this still measures 7 1/2" x 9 1/2" [19 x 24 cm], but it has not been trimmed.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775