Biography of Gary Cooper :- An American film actor. His father was a British emigrant who became a Montana state court judge. In 1910 he traveled with his mother and older brother Arthur to England, where he studied at the Dunstable College until the beginning of the First World War .
On his return to the United States he worked on his family’s cattle ranch during the years of the war. He studied at the agricultural school of Wesleyan College of Bozeman (Montana) and Grinnell College of Iowa.
Biography of Gary Cooper
- Burn:- 7 May 1901, Helena, Montana, United States
- Died:- 13 May 1961, Beverly Hills, California, United States
- Height:- 1.9 m
- Spouse:- Veronica Balfe (m. 1933–1961)
- Place Of Burial:- Holy Cross Cemetery, California, United States, Sacred Hearts Cemetery
After graduating he worked as a guide in Yellowstone National Park and as a cartoonist in the newspaper of his hometown, Helena Independent, before leaving for California in 1924.
See Also: Biography of Kirk Douglas
He worked in a variety of trades, from seller to photographer, before making his debut In the cinema thanks to his great ability like rider.
Between 1925 and 1926 he participated as an extra in many dumb westerns . His first big break came with a last-minute replacement to play a supporting role in Henry King’s Flower of the Desert (1926), starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. The film was very successful and provided him with an acting contract for Paramount Pictures.
During his early years in the silent film, he shared a chart with the great stars of the studio, especially with Clara Bow, with whom he participated in Ello (1927), Clarence Badger, and Children of Divorce (1927), by Frank Lloyd.
Among his most memorable appearances of this period were also a small part in William A. Wellman’s Alas (1927) .
She gained more recognition from the press for her numerous romances with some of her companions, such as Clara Bow herself or Lupe Vélez, who for their interpretive qualities, developed especially in romantic and action films.
Among them was The Virginian (1929), by Victor Fleming , one of his first sound films, considered by Cooper as his best western .
In the 1930s he continued to portray taciturn and romantic heroes in such major films as Josef Von Sternberg’s Morocco (1930), starring Marlene Dietrich , or Rouben Mamoulian’s Streets of the City (1931), a gangster story written by Dashiell Hammett .
Far from falling into the trap, she played some of her best roles in comedies such as Ernest Lubitsch’s A Woman for Two (1933), where she formed an extraordinary love triangle with Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins. In 1933 he married Veronica Balfe, a lady from New York City.
Frank Capra’s Secret of Living (1936), his first film for Columbia Pictures, marked a major turning point in his career.
He was nominated for the first time to the Oscar as better actor to give a new shade to his classic character of integral and firm hero thanks to his magnificent interpretation of the naive and idealistic Longfellow Deeds, one of the cornerstones of his career as an actor.
He was hired by Samuel Goldwyn in 1937 and became, according to the New York Times, the highest paid actor in Hollywood.
Among his most outstanding works of this period within the highlighted adventure film Beau Geste (1939), Wellman, and The Stranger (1940), of William Wyler , who cemented his legend as one of the great performers of Western cinema.
Juan Nadie (1941), his second collaboration with Frank Capra, gave another twist to the subject of the common man whose integrity is put to the test by a corrupt society, this time in a more obscure and disenchanted form.
The early years of the forties were the time of greatest splendor within his career as an actor. He got his first Oscar for Howard Hawks’ Sergeant York (1941), a story of the moral crisis of Alvin York, a pacifist who ends up becoming a hero of World War I. His extraordinary performance made him almost a national hero.
He was nominated again for the Academy Award for Sam Wood’s Pride of the Yankees (1941), in which he gave birth to legendary baseball player Lou Gehrig. In Fire Ball (1941), her second collaboration with Hawks, made one of her best comic performances by bringing to life one of the prim teachers whom the gangster lover, played by Barbara Stanwyck , helps in the elaboration of a Slang dictionary The following year, Cooper earned his third consecutive Oscar nomination thanks to Sam Wood’s ” Who’s Doing the Bells” (1942), an adaptation of the homonymous novel by Ernest Hemingway , Cooper’s close friend since his film debut.
In 1944 he formed his own production company, International Pictures, and in 1947 he was hired by Warner Brothers. Turned into one of the biggest stars of Hollywood, she interpreted some routine vehicles for her, in which she even went to work in production.
During the filming of King Vidor’s The Spring (1949), an ambitious adaptation of the famous novel by Ayn Rand, he fell in love with his partner Patricia Neal.
His wife’s refusal to grant him divorce and his romance with the actress, taken with great discretion, is one of the darkest points in his personal career.
After a series of failures of public and critic, it obtained its fifth Oscar nomination and its second statuette by Only to the danger (1952), of Fred Zinnemann .
Considered his best film, it tells the story of a lonely sheriff who must fight against a group of outlaws after being abandoned by the inhabitants of a small town of the West. Cooper gave the best of himself in one of his most memorable performances, and Only in the face of danger became one of the greatest films in the history of the genre: it obtained a great success of public and the critic coined terms like western psychological or crepuscular To refer to it.
Within this genre he performed at the end of his career some important works such as Veracruz (1954) by Robert Aldrich, or Man of the West (1958), by Anthony Mann.
In April 1961 he was awarded the Academy with an honorary Oscar for “his memorable performances and for the international recognition he has achieved for the film industry”.
His close friend, actor James Stewart, picked him up with tears in his eyes. Shortly afterwards, as a result of incurable cancer, Gary Cooper died in Los Angeles, becoming one of the greatest legends in film history.
