His Woman

His Woman

Directed by Edward Sloman 76 mins (1931)

Gary Cooper – Capt. Sam Whalen

Tough Caribbean freighter Captain Sam Whelan engages Sally Clark, a tramp masquerading as a missionary's daughter, to care for an abandoned baby on board his ship. En route to New York, ships mate Gatson sexually attacks her. The Captain knocks Gatson overboard in an ensuing scuffle. A romance developing between the Captain and Miss Clark is put to the test in New York after an assault investigation uncovers the girl's questionable past.

Also starring Claudette Colbert, Averil Harris, Joseph Calleia and Hamtree Harrington.

Good Sam

Good Sam

Directed by Leo McCarey 114 mins (1948)

Gary Cooper – Sam Clayton

Sam Clayton has a good heart and likes to help out people in need. In fact, he likes to help them out so much that he often finds himself broke and unable to help his own family buy the things they need–like a house.

Also starring Ann Sheridan, Ray Collins, Edmund Lowe, Joan Lorring and Clinton Sundberg

Director Leo Mccarey shot two different endings and let remarks by preview audiences determine which one to use.

Garden of Evil

Garden of Evil

Directed by Henry Hathaway 100 mins (1954)

Gary Cooper – Hooker

Three Americans are headed by ship around the cape to the California gold fields when they are put ashore for several weeks in a sleepy little Mexican village. While there, they are offered the job of following a lady deep into the Indian-infested mountains of Mexico to rescue the lady's husband trapped by a cave-in at their gold mine. For the job they are promised $2000 each. While each contemplates their own chances for getting the lady and/or the gold mine, if they can survive to enjoy it.

Also starring Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Hugh Marlowe, Cameron Mitchell and Rita Moreno.

Many of the musical motifs in Bernard Herrmann's score are reminiscent of those he used a few years later in Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo."

Friendly Persuasion

Friendly Persuasion

Directed by William Wyler

Gary Cooper – Jess Birdwell

A Quaker family live a peaceful and productive life in a prosperous Indiana farming community during the Civil War. Jess Birdwell, his wife Eliza and their children live their faith and their beliefs every day. They are friendly, open, honest and welcoming. They live an almost idyllic life. They also preach non-violence and remain neutral as far as the war and fighting goes. They are against slavery but don't feel men should be killed over the issue. Their eldest daughter Mattie is sweet on Gard Jordan who is now a Union Lieutenant but they think no less of him for that. Their peaceful coexistence with the war is tested, along with their faith and their beliefs, when a Confederate army threatens their area.

Also starring Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton and Phyllis Love

This was President Ronald Reagan's favourite film. In May 1988 he presented Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev with a VHS copy.

Nominated for 6 Oscars, winner at Cannes Film Festival

Fighting Caravans

Fighting Caravans

Directed by Otto Bower and David Burton 92 mins (1931)

Gary Cooper – Clint Belmet

Clint Belmet is a bit of a firebrand and is sentenced to at least 30 days in jail, but his partners, Bill Jackson  and Jim Bridger talk a sympathetic Frenchwoman named Felice into telling the bumbling, drunken marshal that Clint had married her the previous night. Clint is released so he can accompany Felice on the wagon train heading west to California.

Also starring Lili Damita, Ernest Torrence, Trully Marshall and Fred Kohler

Doomsday

Doomsday

Directed by Rowland Lee 60 mins (1928)

Gary Cooper – Arnold Furze

A woman must choose between a life on the farm and a life of luxury.

Also starring Florence Vidor, Lawrence Grant and Charles A Stevenson

The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall wrote at the time that Cooper's acting in this silent film is "wonderfully natural" and gives the character "an ingratiating personality". 

Distant Drums

Distant Drums

Directed by Raoul Walsh 101 mins (1951)

Gary Cooper – Capt. Quincey Wyatt

After destroying a Seminole fort, American soldiers and their rescued companions must face the dangerous Everglades and hostile Indians in order to reach safety.

Also starring Mari Aldon, Richard Webb, Ray Teal and Robert Barrat

Cooper loved the adventure of making Distant Drums. His old friend and longtime stand-in and stunt double Slim Talbot later said, "I never doubled a stunt for Cooper in this one. And he never worked harder. But he was doing the things he likes and wouldn't pass them up for the world."

Two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers and painter George Curtis, fall for free-spirited Gilda Farrell. When she can’t make up her mind which one of them she prefers, she proposes a “gentleman’s agreement”: She will move in with them as a friend and critic of their work, but they will never have sex. But when Tom goes to London to supervise a production of one of his plays, leaving Gilda alone with George, how long will their gentleman’s agreement last?

Devil and the Deep

Devil and the Deep

Directed by Marion Gering 78 mins (1932)

Gary Cooper – Lt. Semper

Naval commander Charles Storm has made life miserable for his wife Diana due to his insane jealousy over every man she speaks to. His obsessive behavior soon drives her to the arms of a handsome lieutenant. When Charles learns of their affair, he plots revenge.

Also starring Tallulah Bankhead, Charles Laughton, Cary Grant and Paul Porcasi

At no point is the navy that Charles Laughton, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper and belong to named. That the officers are English and others American would not make sense in the British or U.S. navy, but no flags or emblems are seen, and their uniforms belong to no known country on earth.

Design for Living

Design for Living 

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. 91mins. (1933)

Gary Cooper - George Curtis

A woman cannot decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship.

Also starring Frederic Maarsh, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton, Isabel Jewell and Jane Darwell.

Based on the play of the same name by Noel Coward, this was the tenth most popular movie at the U.S. box office for 1933.

Dallas

Dallas

Directed by Stuart Heisler 94 mins (1950)

Gary Cooper – Blayde “Reb” Hollister

Land, a family, a future. They’re “dreams, fried up, short order” for Blayde Hollister (Gary Cooper). Rightly or wrongly, this ex-Confederate from Georgia has waged his own war to settle past injustices. Now he’s a wanted man. And he can feel the law closing in on him. Posing as a Boston dandy, he comes to the boom town with a gun and a plan: to smoke out the notorious Marlow brothers (including Steve Cochran and Raymond Massey), then give ’em a whiff of gunsmoke. Director Stuart Heisler (Along Came Jones) keeps the pace flowing like the local saloon’s liquor. Max Steiner’s score gallops like a hell-for-leather posse and screenwriter John Twist fires scene after scene with lines like “you’ll get your pockets picked in a graveyard”. Dallas, here we come!

Also starring Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Raymond Massey and Barbara Payton

Reed Hadley played the part of Wild Bill Hickok in this film. Gary Cooper starred as the same character in "The Plainsman" (DeMille, 1936).

Cloak and Dagger

Cloak and Dagger

Directed by Fritz Lang 106 mins (1946)

Gary Cooper – Prof. Alvah Jesper

In this Fritz Lang’s compelling World War II espionage thriller, Gary Cooper stars as Alvah Jasper, a shy and retiring physics professor at a midwestern university. When government agents press Jasper into joining them in an effort to curtail the Nazis’ efforts to attain atomic secrets, his life takes a dramatic turn.

Also starring Robert Alda, Lilli Palmer, Vladimir Sokoloff and J. Edward Bromberg

During one scene while Gary Cooper is walking, there is a shot of his ankle, shoe and pant leg and what appears to be a "leg brace". Cooper limped due to a car accident as a younger man. There is no indication in the film that the prosthetic was planned or a deliberate and part of the character.

MAria’s notes

This film was made in 1946 cast my father very much against type. his role as a nuclear scientist names Alvah Jasper was what the Austrian director Fritz Lang wanted to do, and he always said he based the character Jasper on our famous atomic scientist J. R. Oppenheimier.

I remember going out with my parents to visit Cal Tech  where the studio had arranged for him to get a “little coaching” from the scientific community there. To get into the skin of an atomic scientist was not a role my father did with ease. He was coached in order to learn to speak with ease, some of the technical dialogue and  acquire some information about  the ‘splitting of atoms”!! He was in awe  as we stood in the back of the classroom/laboratory and watched the professor  fill a huge blackboard  with numbers, diagrams, equations: He wrote so fast the images seemed to explode all over the board, like a meadow of Paul Klee creatures come to life. In an unusual way this was a challenging film for my father and he was nervous about delivering his scientific dialogue with enough conviction and knowledge. As for the physical ‘action” there are rough fights in this film and he did not use a double  in spite of was suffering from an old hip and back injury.

The “message” of the movie about the dangers of Atomic Energy and its misuse in the wrong hands, created controversy. In a speech that Jasper gives he passionately says— “ Peace? There is no peace. It’s year ONE of the AtomicAge and God have mercy on us all——if we think we can wage other wars without destroying ourselves etc…”. It got thrown out by the studio and they insisted Jasper/Cooper deliver a bland, innocuous speech, which for me undermined some of the guts of the story.

Poppa loved working with Lily Palmer in this, her first American film. She became a close family friend as well a his co-star, and he felt was an extremely  fine actress. This is a very different Gary Cooper film, but he always wanted to try out different personas …another facet of his versatile acting talents.

Maria Cooper Janis

City Streets

City Streets

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian 83 mins (1931)

Gary Cooper – The Kid

Nan, a racketeer's daughter, is in love with The Kid, a shooting gallery showman. Despite Nan's prodding, The Kid has no ambitions about joining the rackets and making enough money to support Nan in the lifestyle she's accustomed to. Her attitude changes after her father implicates her in a murder and she's sent to prison. During her incarceration, her father convinces The Kid to join the gang in order to help free Nan. When Nan is released, she wants nothing more to do with the mob and tries to get The Kid to quit, but she may be too late.

Also starring Sylvia Sidney, Paul Lukas, William “Stage” Boyd and Wynne Gibson

The first sound flashback. Dialogue heard earlier in the film was repeated over a huge close-up of Sylvia Sydney’s tear-stained face as she recalls the past.

Children of Divorce

Children of Divorce

Directed by Frank Lloyd 70 mins (1927)

Gary Cooper – Edward D. “Ted” Larrabee

A young flapper tricks her childhood sweetheart into marrying her. He really loves another woman, but didn’t marry her for fear the marriage would end in divorce, like his parents’. Complications ensue.

Also starring Clara Bow, Esther Ralston, Einar Hanson and Norman Trevor

James Hall was originally chosen to play the male lead in this silent movie, but the role was given to Gary Cooper at the insistence of star Clara Bow. The role helped to propel Cooper towards superstardom.

Bright Leaf

Bright Leaf

Directed by Michael Curtiz 110 mins (1950)

Gary Cooper – Brant Royle

In 1894, Royle returns to a southern town which he and his father had been forced to leave by Singleton, the biggest and richest tobacco-grower in the area. Royle, among other plans, intends to marry Singleton's daughter, Margaret, and gain possession of Singleton's fabulous mansion, "Bright Leaf." He gets the need financial support to compete against Singleton from an old flame, Sonia, and he eventually does so, and drives Singleton to suicide. To complete his business affairs, he marries Margaret. But Margaret also has a plan or two, none of which bode well for her new husband.

Also starring Lauren Bacall, Patricia Neal, Jack Carson, Donald Crisp and Gladys George.

This was the last film in Lauren Bacall’s seven-year contract with Warner Brothers.To add accuracy to the film, an authentic, turn-of-the- century cigarette maker was purchased as a prop.

Bluebeard’s 8th Wife

Bluebeard’s 8th Wife

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch 85 mins (1938)

Gary Cooper – Michael Brandon

US multi-millionaire Michael Brandon marries his eight wife, Nicole, the daughter of a broken French Marquis. But she doesn’t want to be only a number in the row of his ex-wives and starts her own strategy to “tame” him.

Also starring Claudette Colbert, Edward Everett Horton, David Niven and Elizabeth Patterson.

This film was based on a French play by Alfred Savoir that was translated into English by Charlton Andrews and produced on Broadway. The New York production opened on Sept. 19, 1921 at the Ritz Theatre and ran for 155 performances. It has previously been produced as a silent film starring Gloria Swanson – Bluebeard’s 8th Wife.

Blowing Wild

Blowing Wild

Directed by Hugo Fregonese

Gary Cooper – Jeff Dawson

In South America, when Jeff Dawson and Dutch Peterson's oil rigs are dynamited by local bandits, the two partners resort to risky transportation of nitroglycerin to raise money.

Also starring Barbara Stanwyck, Ruth Roman, Anthony Quinn and Ward Bond.

During filming Gary Cooper won his second Oscar for High Noon, while Anthony Quinn won his first Oscar for Viva Zapata!

Beau Sabreur

Beau Sabreur

Directed by John Waters 70 mins (1928)

Gary Cooper – Maj. Henri de Beaujolais

Beau Sabreur is a 1928 American silent film directed by John Waters and starring Gary Cooper and Evelyn Brent. Based on the novel Beau Sabreur by P. C. Wren, who also wrote Beau Geste, the film is about a desert-bound member of the French Foreign Legion who exposes a betrayer to the Legion and is then sent on a mission among the Arabs to conclude the signing of a crucial peace treaty.

Also starring Evelyn Brent, Noah Beery, William Powell, Roscoe Karns and Mitchell Lewis.

The characters played by Noah Beery and William Powell died in the original Beau Geste; in this sequel the actors return but play different characters.

Along Came Jones

Along Came Jones

Directed by Stuart Heisler 90 mins (1945)

Gary Cooper  - Melody Jones

A good-natured saddle tramp traveling with his sidekick is mistaken for a ruthless outlaw with a price on his head.

Also starring Loretta Young, William Demarest, Dan Duryea and Frank Sully

Gary Cooper's first effort as an independent producer through his company Cinema Artists Corp. It was the only feature film produced by Cooper during his movie career. He mercilessly spoofs his own slow-talking cowboy persona.

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland

Directed by Norman Z. Mc Leod 76 mins (1933)

Gary Cooper – White Knight

On a boring winter afternoon, Alice dreams that she’s visiting the land behind the mirror. This turns out to be a surrealistic nightmare, with all sorts of strange things happening to her, like changing her size or playing croquet with flamingos.

Also starring Charlotte Henry, Richard Arlen, Roscoe Ates, William Austin,  Leon Errol and Cary Grant

Virtually the entire star stable was thrown into this movie because Paramount was trying to keep from going bankrupt and thought that such a star-laden movie could save the studio from failing. It didn't work since most of the stars couldn't be recognized because of their costumes. Instead, two Mae West movies, She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel saved the studio from bankruptcy instead.

A Man From Wyoming

A Man from Wyoming

Directed by Rowland V. Lee

Gary Cooper – Jim Baker

When World War One pulls the U.S. in, builder Jim Baker goes enthusiastically. The misery of life in the trenches seems to take any romantic edge off, until adventure seeking general's daughter Patricia Hunter is caught foolishly wandering around the front line. At length, they fall in love and marry. When he is reported dead, she becomes irresponsible and turns her family's mansion into a wild party site, one which Jim eventually comes to.

Also starring June Collyer, Regis Toomey, Morgan Farley, E.H Calvert and Mary Foy