- He had a film presence that, that guaranteed credulity,
guaranteed belief, you know? Few actors have it, and
he bloody well had it. - He was wondrous. His eyes... They said everything. He really had just an extraordinary face. Whatever he thought, showed, you know? He was gorgeous. - He was, and has been described as the quintessential American hero. And he understood that, and he
accepted his responsibility, and he was a forthright,
quiet, wonderful man. - I think one of the reasons that Gary Cooper could become
the all American hero to so many people, to his public, think it's because he very truly never felt that he was any different than the average Joe down the street. I remember hearing that from day one up until the last week that he was alive. "I'm a simple guy who got lucky." Along with that was his
sense that we have in us the ability to be our best self. He was as human as
anybody, but in his roles, and in the characters
that he chose to play, his deep belief was in the
nobility of the American spirit. It probably sounds corny,
but he really felt that. - [Man] He was born Frank James Cooper, in Helena, Montana in 1901. The parents were English. Charles Cooper, Gary's father, apprenticed himself to a law firm, and eventually was elected to
the supreme court in Montana. - [Woman] They lived in Montana. They had a ranch outside of Helena called The Seven-Bar-Nine, so he and
his older brother, Arthur, grew up on that ranch. His mother was very elegant, very English, but she was also terribly strong. I think she could have
crossed a covered wagon and done very very well. - All the things that you
associate with the west, the frontier, cowboys
and Indians, buffalo, range homesteaders versus
free rangers, gun battles, all that sorta stuff was living memory everybody that Cooper
knew when he was a boy. Cooper, for a while,
actually went to a school with some Indian children. - [Maria] He was taught
how to ride, I think, by the Indians, in fact,
and they were his buddies. - [Jeffrey] And because of
this wild west background, his mother felt that he was getting to be too much of a rough fellow,
and wanted to polish him up and send him to school in England. And so, Cooper and his
older brother by six years, Arthur, went to Dunstable School in 1910, and stayed there for three years. This meant that Cooper had to change, from being a cowboy and Indian, sorta wild west boy, to a rather polished English school boy with proper manners. - When he came back from England, by then Arthur was of fighting age, and the war was approaching. He went off to fight, and my father then, kind of ran the ranch with his mother, because Judge Cooper had
to be minding the court, so my father and his mother
really kept the ranch going for that period of time
when Arthur was away. I know he'd had that
reputation over his life as being a loner, and I think it started even as a youngster. - [Jeffrey] Cooper is
the sort of guy who liked to go out on his own, hunting and fishing, and talking to the Indians, and the fact that he was an
extraordinarily tall boy, and sort of shot up during
his early teen years pretty close to his final
height of about 6'3. - [Maria] He went to high
school in bits and pieces, and then he went to university at Grinnell in Iowa for two years. - He worked as a waiter
and doing odd jobs, and shoveling snow and preparing things, and was generally known
as just an unremarkable sort of fellow, not particularly academic, not particularly athletic, nor
was he particularly talented either, because he didn't even make the dramatic club at Grinnell. - He was more interested
in art and drawing. When I came across some
of his old school books, and the pages are filled
with drawings and sketches of Indians and saddles. Clearly nature, and living in Montana, growing up as they did on a ranch, that was clearly very very
much a part of his whole being. I know my father always considered
himself extremely lucky, because the whole acting
career was never anything that he had even dreamt
about in the beginning. He went to Hollywood and
he found it was very hard to earn any money that you could live on. - [Jeffrey] He's had two years of college, he's more or less given
up hopes of becoming a commercial artist,
he has one great skill, the ability to ride a horse,
and he's great looking. So he runs into some pals from Montana, and they say, "You can make $5 a day by being an extra in movies, and you can make $10 a
day by being a stunt man, falling off a horse." - [A.C.] Coop worked in, what they call, Poverty Row in those days, down at Sunset in those areas where they'd come by everyday and pick
up three or four fellows and put 'em in a picture,
and he did a lot of westerns, 'cause he was a good rider,
that's how he earned his living. - [Maria] After his
career began to develop, his agent, a woman named Nan Collins, suggested that he really
needed to change his name. There also was an actor
with a very similar name, she said, "This isn't gonna work." So, he said, oh gosh, what am I gonna do? And she said, "Well,
I'm from Gary, Indiana, how about Gary as a name?" And he jumped at it. (upbeat music) He did a few other shorts,
a few other pictures. And then there was a western called The Winning of Barbara Worth, and that brought him into
some public attention. Then he was chosen to
be in a movie called It. The star was Clara Bow,
of course a very big leading lady at the time. They seemed to hit it off
extremely well together. There was chemistry on the screen. I guess there was
chemistry off screen, too. - [A.C.] She helped get him into Wings, the picture, that small part that he had pyramided into stardom. - [Jeffrey] He has a tiny 90 second, but very significant part
in a very very important silent movie and it won the first Academy Award for best picture. The two young pilot
cadets come into his tent, and he's kind of the old veteran, and he's chewing a chocolate bar, and he said, "Well, I have to go out and do a couple of turns." You see the shadow of the plane crashing, and that's the end of Cooper. - And that one scene just, he
just exploded on the screen, and became Paramount's
most important leading man. The next year, after that
small scene in Wings, he starred in several
pictures here at Paramount. I don't know if anybody in our business during many many years that had a career like Gary Cooper, just
kept building and building and building over all the
120 pictures that he did. Coop had a lot of people
that were very important in his life, and all the
leading ladies adored him and wanted him in their
pictures, but as an extra, and later as a leading man. - All these years that my
father was working in pictures, they were still silent films. So many people who were
big stars in the silents could not make that transition, mostly because the voice
wasn't able to project. Luckily, my father
didn't have that trouble. He always teased... And laughed about that. He said, well, he had so much practice calling hogs and calling for
the cattle out on the ranch he had good lung power. - The first talking
picture Gary Cooper did for us here at Paramount
was the Virginian. He didn't have a lot of dialogue, but when he said it, he
said it with such conviction you listened, and it meant something. He had great command. And that one thing where
he said to Walter Houston, "When you say that, smile." Which became a saying for all the kids who were playing cowboys and
Indians all over the country, they'd look at each other and say, "When you say that to me, smile." - And it was very much
my father's character to say simply that, and with
the force to back it up. Once he began to make it,
it was a tremendous rush, I mean, he was incredible looking. Everybody really started
to go crazy about him. The women were chasing after him, the men thought he was wonderful. The Hollywood of the early days was quite different from today, the
studio system was different. They built the stars differently, the protected the stars differently. The studios were very very controlling about who their stars went out with. He managed to go where he
wanted, with whom he wanted. It's interesting to me that he never, never had an inflated sense of himself. There was a wonderful western expression that he taught me when
I was very very young, and I think I didn't realize what a lesson for life he was giving me. But it was something he
learned with the cowboys, and he believed it, and he lived it. He said, "There ain't never a
horse that couldn't be rode, there ain't never a rider
that couldn't be throwed." - You're pretty brave... With women. - The matter? Don't you like brave men? - Perhaps. Your change... Soldier. - [A.C.] The fist picture
he did with Marlene Dietrich who adored him, and
wanted him in a picture, was not the most pleasant
picture, as I remember, for Coop. Joseph Von Sternberg concentrated tremendously on Marlene Dietrich, and Coop felt that he was
being a little neglected. He said, "I was a little peeved." And I thought it added
greatly to the character he was playing in the picture. - You sound tired of life. - I don't know whether I am or not. I was when I joined this outfit. How about you, mademoiselle,
been on the stage very long? - Long enough. - Tired of it?
- No. - You've got a lot of
pictures with that man. Your husband? - Husband? I never found a man good enough for that. - That's just the way I feel about women. (slow music) - [A.C.] He had that ability
to be at home in a saddle or in a western outfit,
on a western street. He was equally home and did many pictures which he was in tails and
tuxedos and well dressed. He could do any kind of a
part, and he could do it well. - This was a side of Cooper that people didn't know that much about. Somebody who, beginning in 1931, 32, when he had gone to Europe and met the Countess Di Frasso,
an American millionairess, she'd entertained the
highest society of Europe, including English royalty and nobility. - [Maria] She was a very
sophisticated woman. They became friends and spent
one or two years together. - She is the one who
made his taste so divine. He had impeccable taste. His clothes were made by tailors, and fabulous shoes,
fantastic shoes he had. And he had boots, you know, and then he had great sweaters, and I mean, he had the
best clothes in the world. - [Maria] She brought him a
certain kind of sophistication that he had not had before. He took to it very naturally. She introduced him to areas of culture that he wouldn't have been
exposed to in Montana. - [Man] The Farewell to Arms was Cooper's first Hemingway film, and he made it before he knew Hemingway. - Don't let her die. Oh God, please don't let her die. I'd do anything for you
if you don't let her die. You took the baby, that was all right, but don't let her die, please. Please. Dear God, don't let her die. - The wonderful Helen Hayes, she told me that she really
felt head over heels in love with my father when she
was doing the picture. They were rehearsing a scene, and she said, "I know,
if Gary had said to me... I would have left my husband, I would have left my children, I would have left Hollywood, I would have left anything,
just to come and be with him." She said, "All he did
was take me very gently and very sweetly by my shoulders, and he just said, 'Helen.'" - You're a fine girl, a brave girl. - Yes. I am a brave girl. - Whatever happens, do not be afraid. - I'll not be afraid. - We've never been apart,
really, not since we met. - Not since we met. - And never can be. - Never parted. - In life, and in death, say it, Cath. - In life, and in death,
we'll never be parted. - You do believe that, don't you, Cath? - I believe it... And I'm not afraid. - It's fair to say, in whatever
situation my father was in, he enjoyed it to the hilt, but after a certain period of time, not terribly long, he was
always ready to leave. My mother's name was
Veronica Balfe, originally. Her mother and father were divorced. By the time my mother was 17, she really didn't like
the New York social scene. She wanted to get out,
she was a bit of a rebel, she wanted to do her own thing, so she came with her
chaperone to California, and as her mother's
brother was Cedric Gibbons, the great art director, her mother felt she was in safe hands. She was not like the
Hollywood type of women who he had been with, and... I suppose it was a time in his life that he wanted to think
about settling down. My mother's nickname
has always been Rocky. She has tremendous
strength, great vitality, and this tremendous shyness, which, I suspect probably,
aside from the fact that she was terrific
looking, just a knockout, I suspect my father
reacted to that as well. They were married in 1933... And they really were tremendous
best friends and companions. She was very much of an athlete, she would organize all kinds
of sports activities for him. My father loved to shoot, he loved guns. My mother refused to kill anything, but knowing my father loved shooting, she took up skeet shooting. She became so good, she
was California state women's skeet champion. My father loved it. He was so proud, he'd take
her down to the gun club, and she would outshoot a
lot of his male buddies. My father was extremely
shy, that is the truth, and some of the screen
business that one sees, that really came out of a natural shyness. As he got more and more professional, he learned to utilize it. - I don't think I ever saw a picture that I loved more than
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. When I think back over the
greats of the business, I can't think of another person really, that ranks with him. - He's news. - He's the guy that's
wholesome, and sweet. - This is absurd, the woman's
obviously in love with him. - If Mrs. Dawson here wasn't with me, I'd probably knock your heads together. - Oh, I don't mind. - Well all right, maybe I will. (yelling) Hand me my pants. - You have no pants, sir. You came home last night without them. - Don't be silly, Walter,
I couldn't run around the streets without any
clothes, I'd be arrested. - That's what the two policemen said, sir. - [A.C.] When Frank
Capra called Gary Cooper and said he wanted to do
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Cooper of course, was ready right away. - I think Capra read my father very well. He read his inner core very well. It was such a completely comfortable role for my father to take. He felt that if he just
knew the character, studied what the character was about, how the character would
think if he were him, then papa said, "Well,
I don't have to act. Then I can just be." - Cooper never seemed to be doing anything when he was acting. He seemed to be so minimal as
to be virtually ineffectual. And yet, over and over and
over again, the story's told, that when the rushes were shown, everybody was dazzled by how
great the performance was. - Well there you are, Grant's tomb. Hope you're not dissapointed. - It's wonderful. - To most people, it's an awful let down. - Huh? - I said, to most people it's a washout. - Oh, that depends on what they see. - Now, what do you see? - Me? Oh, I see the small Ohio farm boy becoming a great soldier. I see thousands of marching men. I see General Lee with a
broken heart, surrendering. And I can see the
beginning of a new nation, like Abraham Lincoln said. And I can that Ohio boy being
inaugurated as president. Things like that can only happen
in a country like America. Excuse me. - I guess Mr. Deeds would be... As close to him, as a man, that I knew. I think it was boyish charm. I think that's what my mother
saw in him, boyish charm. And I thought he was handsome,
and tall, and a good actor. - [A.C.] And I think
that's one of the reasons why Gary Cooper remained such a big star. When you saw Coop on the screen, you always wanted to be on his side. - I saw him in the
Plainsman at least 10 times. It was on the bill with
the theater where I was dancing on stage, so I got to
see it whenever I wanted to. (upbeat music) - Yellow Hand find out
now which way soldier go. (speaking foreign language) - Bill. - Yes, Calamity, I do. I love you. - [Joan] Very impressive
in his gentleness, and his directness and sincerity. I think that rang true with
everyone that ever saw him, right away, his sincerity. - [Charlton] Beau Geste was one of the best films for me that he made. - You don't wanna stay here and die like rats in a trap, Do you? - [All] No! (laughing) - I saw it several times as a boy. He was surrounded by wonderful actors, but he carried the whole film. It's a film about brothers, and loyalty, and looking out for each other. - Gary Cooper was very selective
in the parts that he took, and he turned down an awful lot. And his good friend, Joel McCrea, who was a big star in the light, who idolized Gary Cooper,
and Joel used to say, "You know, I do all of the
pictures that Coop rejects." - [Joan] He was always himself. He played well within his own personality, that's what we liked about him. - My father liked doing comedy, and he had a real sense of timing, which I think was sadly
not explored enough. - Will you send up five
hamburgers with all the trimmings, five chocolate ice cream sodas, and five pieces of apple pie. No, apple, with cheese. Yeah, thanks. - [Woman] Hello there. - [A.C.] Frank Capra was instrumental in so many people's lives, Gene Arthur, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Cooper just adored Capra. I think all Frank Capra had to do, really call Coop and say,
I'm starting a picture in three weeks, Coop would
say, fine, when do you need me? - Two great films with Frank Capra, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe. He becomes every man, he
becomes the small town yokel, he's naive, he's
idealistic, he's provincial, and all the smart city slickers think they can pull the wool over his eyes, of course they can't, because then Capra, the common man, prevails. - People are finally finding out that the guy next door isn't the bad egg. That's simple, isn't it? Yet a thing like that's got a chance of spreading 'till it touches every last doggone human being in the world, and you talk about, about killing it. Well, when this fire dies
down, what's gonna be left? More misery, more hunger, and more hate. And what's to prevent that
from starting all over again? Nobody knows the answer to that
one, and certainly not you, with those slimy bollocks
up there you've got. - I had really an
extraordinarily lucky childhood. (slow music) I had two parents who were
so strong and supportive, and I would say, loaded with common sense. One of the points they always made was, you know, look, all this stuff
that's going on around us, it has nothing to do with you, it comes with the territory
of the work your father does, and it's work, and you're gonna have to make your life, do you own thing. You know, in those days, they
work six days a week shooting, so there wasn't a lot
of late night partying when he was doing a film. But on the weekends, a lot
of the buddies would be over. Claudette Colbert and her husband, they were close friends of ours. Gabel and Van Johnson, and
Arlene Dahl, and Lex Sparker, and Jimmy Stewart was
so close to the family. The experience for me of
growing up in that atmosphere was really incredible, because my father had access to anybody, anywhere, anytime, any place, meeting some of the most creative and exciting people in the world. Hemingway, Pablo Picasso,
people in the arts, people in the sciences. It was the natural fabric
of my life, of our life. Guns were part of his frontier persona, and he never lost that. We had a gun room at home, which was a game room,
there was a billiard table, and saddles, and some
memorabilia and things, but it was his gun room,
and he would spend hours taking care of his guns,
cleaning them, oiling them. - He took us into the
gun room in his home, and he had them in cases,
beautifully arranged, and this was part of their life. They would go out on
and on their free time, would travel to places. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper
and his other friends, they would go out and do their shoots, and have a hell of a good time. - [Maria] Ernest Hemingway
and my father were, they were buddies. They just had a basic comradery, buddy buddy kind of a feeling. They loved to go out shooting together, they loved the wild country. Because my father was
not, quote, and actor, didn't have any Hollywood airs about him, I think it was a natural friendship that he and Hemingway felt that there was a very close link between the two of them. Alvin York, the pacifist
who didn't wanna fight, but when pushed to it, he
knew what he had to do. I would say that was Gary Cooper, too. - Alvin, I. - Yeah? - Alvin, I just. - Yeah? - Alvin, you. - My first day on the set
of shooting Sergeant York, I was of course, apprehensive, nervous, playing with a big star, a legend, and being his leading lady in a big movie. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't know what to call him. I didn't know what he was gonna call me. We didn't have any formal introduction. If he called me Joan, would
I have had to call him Gary? He settled the whole thing
for me in one minute. He said, "How do you do, Ms. Gracie?" So, I said, oh thank goodness,
he didn't call me Joan. He called me Gracie,
and I called him Alvin whenever I met him on the lot, at lunch, or on the set, and I thought it was the most considerate thing that he did. He knew that I was a
youngster, I was inexperienced, I was 16 years old, the break of my life, to work with him and to
work on this picture. And he probably knew that if
he didn't handle me right, I'd bolt for the door in a veil of tears, so that was one very
important point settled. - They won't get me, I'll
go back in 'em hills. - Yeah, and they'll put
hounds on your trail and follow you no matter
how far back you go. - And they better not catch up with me, or they'll be a-wishin' they hadn't. - [Man] York, take over. You're the only noncom left. - The rest of you, keep under cover. (gunshots) - Come back here. Where you goin'? - You done give command. (slow music) - [Maria] My father hated fighting. Loathed it. He would do almost anything
to avoid an argument. But don't step over the line. - [Jeffrey] Gary Cooper won his first Academy Award for Sergeant York. - [Announcer] Actor award,
Lieutenant James Stewart, last year's winner, presents the cherished statuette to Gary Cooper. He wins his Oscar for a vivid
portrayal of Sergeant York. - [A.C.] There'd been some
actors that you look at, and they were true Americans. Jimmy Steward, Jim Cagney, Gary Cooper, and I think when you look at his pictures, it made you proud that
you were an American. - Pride of the Yankees, I
think kind of symbolized one of the elements that
was important to my father, which was trying to grasp
what it was that made a hero, and I think that the challenge
of playing that role, the role of Lou Gehrig, who not
only was a fabulous athlete, but who took the news
of a terminal sentence years and years before his time, the way he handled that
with courage, with dignity, I think that kind of a role, I think my father just loved it. - Lou Gehrig of course, was left handed, Coop was right handed. What they had to do in the background, all the letterings were all reversed, and he threw right handed. And of course, when the film
was developed and shown, they reversed the film so it looked like he was throwing left hand, and all of the letters
were reading properly. (upbeat music) - Tangle foot. - [Announcer] The story
of an American hero, cheered and idolized by millions. A symbol of courage
and true sportsmanship. The Pride of the Yankees, a
strange and fascinating drama in the real life of a man,
his hopes, his dreams. In a nationwide poll, millions
of Americans voted one man to play the coveted role. That man, Academy Award
winning Gary Cooper. Teresa Wright is the woman
who loved and understood him. - Lou Gehrig, I think I
could learn to like you. - Well, you've been out
with me four days in a row, and you're out with me here tonight, and well, isn't that was best girls do? Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. - When my father went to the South Pacific to entertain the soldiers,
he was very very nervous, because he said, "God, you
know, I'm not Bob Hope, I'm not Jack Benny, I
don't have a line of comedy and pattern, I can't sing. How can I entertain the guys?" And one of the colonels at the
base said to him, you know, "Coop, the main thing the
guys want to hear from you, is would you please do the
Lou Gehrig speech for them?" And he said he would
never forget that moment. Talking to 1,000 or more
guys, about to go into battle. The instinctive roles that he took were compatible with his philosophy and compatible with his nature. If anyone wants to have
a sense of something that he believed, the lines of John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls, that poem was one of my father's favorites. No man is an island, entire unto itself. Every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. (romantic music) - There's nothing to do for you, I'll sit by and watch you, and in the nights, we'll make love. - You are shameless. - If you don't love me, I
love you enough for both. - [Man] When the time to play
For Whom the Bell Tolls came, Hemingway wanted Cooper to be in it. Hemingway knew about Cooper through certain mutual friends,
like Dietrich and Birdman, and gave the hero of the
novel before he met Cooper some of the Cooper attributes. He comes from Montana, for example, and he's, you know, tall
and lean, as Cooper is. - I admired Coop, even
though I did not agree with his politics, because
he never ever imposed them on the people around him. I know that he felt very strongly about a communist influence in pictures. - I've never read Karl Marx, and I don't know the basis of communism, beyond what I've picked up from hearsay. What I've heard, I don't like it, because it isn't on the level. - I was sitting in the first or second row of the audience, which was a big audience. We were in quite a big room, there must have been,
well, there were at least several hundred people, the
place is always crowded. I was surprised to see Gary Cooper, 'cause I didn't think he would bring anything to the hearings, and he didn't, all he brought was his personality, and that's what they were looking for. - I am not in nearly as
good a position to know as some of the witnesses
that have been ahead of me, because I'm not a very
active member in our guild. - Yes, he said how he felt,
he was against communism, and the people who are a part of it, but he never named anybody, he never got involved in that sense, and that, to me, tells more
about him than anything else, because I had so many
friends that were ruined, and not rightly so. - [Announcer] This is Howard Roark, possessed of a great talent, but unwilling to compromise
his ideals at any price. Dominique Francon, the
kind of woman who could enslave any man, except one. - [Maria] As the expression
goes, into every life, a little rain falls, and I suppose, maybe in Hollywood,
maybe that seems to start sooner than other places. My father had done a film
called The Fountainhead with Patricia Neal, and... During the making of that
film, they fell in love. - I have no pride left to stop me. I love you without
dignity, without regret. Would it please you to
hear that I've lived in torture all these months, hoping never to find you,
and wishing to give my life just to see you once more? - We went on location first. Oh my dear, from that
moment on, I just loved him. I really did, you know,
and it's terrible of me, considering he was a married man, but, oh, that didn't mean a thing to me, because (laughing) it was terrible of me to do in those days which
one does when one's young. But to me, he was the beauty of the world. - My mother and father both, I think, handled it very very sensitively from my point of view, very intelligently. And I was never made to
feel that there was any lack of love for me, or
that I was responsible, or that his attitude
toward me had changed. In fact, my mother was very strong, admonishingly, not to blame him. She, in effect said, "These
things happen in life, and your father loves you very much, nothing will ever change that, and we'll work it out,
we'll see it through." Even during the time
that they were separated, we continued doing things
together as a family at odd periods, and we'd
spend a couple months together going off and doing a lot of
fun things, and family things. - We worked together. We did USS Teakettle with Henry Hathaway. Henry Hathaway had an affliction, he had to pick on someone. Everybody in the cast had to go through two weeks of hell from him. I thought, well, he wouldn't
dare do that with Cooper, but sure, it was Cooper's time, and Cooper just sorta
gulped and looked at him, and didn't answer back. And they gave it to him again, you know? And he moved away and he went in back of the props, of the prop wall, and banged on the side of the set. Cooper came back and he told me, he says, "That's my way of handling it, and he can hear me doing that,
then he's a good director, so I put up with it." - [Jeffrey] He made a
number of unremarkable films from around the mid 40s until 1951. Cooper looked his age and more, he was lined in a way, and looked like he had been through it, partly because he had had ulcers and back
problems and hip injury. And then Stanley Kramer, who
was an independent producer, had a marvelous script from
Carl Forman, High Noon. - I mean it, if you won't go with me now, I'll be on that train when it leaves here. - I've got to stay. - [Narrator] A
terror-stricken town left him to face four kills, single
handed, at high noon. - At one point, when he's
been abandoned by everybody, his deputies, his friends, his townsfolk, his former mistress, his wife, he goes into his office
and closes the door, and writes out his last will
and then he puts his head on the table, and he
cries, because he's afraid. And that's so moving,
and it's so antithetical to the thousands of cowboy
movies that have been made where the hero is
untouchable and invulnerable and can shoot 100 people and nothing will ever happen to him. - Seems like all everybody
and his brother want is to get me out of town. No one wants to see you get killed. Hold it, where you going? - I don't know, back
to the office, I guess. - Oh no, you're getting on that horse and you're getting out. What's the matter with you? You were ready to do it
yourself, you said so. - Look, Harv, I thought
about it because I was tired, you think about a lot of
things when you're tired, but I can't do it. - [Jeffrey] It's a class
American film of how a man has to deal with evil on his own. So, this is really going way beyond what anybody had ever
done in a western before. (slow music) (train horn blowing) Cooper won the second Academy Award, the first being for Sergeant York. - The loneliness that Cooper
had in his private life, I think that came out in the picture. Like everybody in our business, they have hills and they have valleys, and at that particular time, Coop said, "I need a good picture." And boy, did he get it in High Noon. Oh, did he get it. And those of us that knew him, oftentimes worried about things that were happening to him that were not pleasant. His separation from
his family at one time, which was unfortunate, which just tore him apart at that times. - I didn't intend to break up the marriage when we started, but
it was real, deep love. Things were happening to him. He had to go to the
hospital, it was an ulcer. Because what you're
doing is eating you up. And I called his mother,
hoping she would say something delicious to me. (laughing) But she didn't, she said, "You
know, it's all your fault." And it disturbed me, and I
called Gary, and I said... This is it. And he was in the
hospital, and he was upset, so I didn't see him
then, that broke us up. - Whatever decision making
process he went through when he decided he wanted
to come back home... Those are always mutual
decisions, you know, it takes two. I think it's stupid to see him go back, 'cause you don't go back to anything. You either have the way with
all to pick up and start again, and the two of them did,
and as a family we did. - [Announcer] Gary Cooper
and Burt Lancaster, the quiet man, and the gunslinger, fighting side by side, and each other. - No! - [Countess] Each one of
those six boxes contains half a million dollars in gold. - How do we know we can trust you? - How do I know I can trust you? - Countess, you're beginning
to talk my language. Looks like we tied up
with the wrong outfit. - We were so surprised,
because I'd only done about 30 pages of script with a fellow named Borden Chase, and Gary Cooper said, "Yes, I'll do the picture." Burt Lancaster was gonna
play the lead in the picture, so it came as a big surprise even to Burt. He welcomed with open arms, he said, "Gee, this really puts us in the big time, with Coop, I'll play the villain." Everything was perfect from then on, gosh, until the very end of the picture, I'd begun to like Burt so much
in the picture as the villain that I said, I don't think
we should kill him, Coop, and he said, "Oh, I
wouldn't finish the picture if I didn't kill him." - [A.C.] In many ways,
Gary Cooper was one of the most moral men I ever knew. I think that's why he
loved to make westerns, 'cause a western is the most
moral story you can tell, it's a good against evil
with the good winning out. - [Maria] So many people refer to Gary Cooper as the American hero. Sometimes they say the last
American hero, in a film sense. He certainly became
almost a mythic figure. There have been so many magazine covers that pick up on the image as heroic. So many heroes today let
people down right away. - I don't think Cooper would
ever be accepted as a villain. You accepted him as a man who
could rise to the occasion to defeat evil and confront
all kinds of problems. I don't think that Cooper
was the most versatile actor, there are actors who can play many parts, and there are actors who can
play themselves very well, but when you looked in his face when you played a scene with him, he had the ability to
maintain heroic presentations, because he had a higher
inner life in his eyes. - I used to say, the camera loves him, or the camera loves her,
and it depended on how the photographed and how they came across, and I think mostly it's in the eyes, and in the attitude and the
general attitude of life. - He did a great many westerns, and yet, could play romantic leads. Two pictures with Marlena Dietrich, Morocco and Desire, in which
he was stunningly good looking, he could to that too,
even when he was older, when he did Love In the Afternoon, with Audrey Hepburn,
who must have been then, at least 20 years younger than he, he still could manage that. - [Announcer] Gary Cooper. Fabulous, as the world's
greatest conniseur of women, who has hunted the species
from Stockholm to Siam. - Audrey Hepburn, delightfully,
completely innocent. How can anyone blamer
her for being dazzled? - He's certainly the most
handsome man in your files. - He's certainly the most utterly no good. - He's got such an American face, like a cowboy, or, or Abraham Lincoln. - How many other men were there? - You mean before I met
you, or since I met you, or all together?
- quit stalling. (soft music) - [Jeffrey] Billy Wilder
felt that he had to disguise the age difference by
keeping Cooper's face somewhat in the shadows,
somewhat gauzy, somewhat misty. I think Cooper was still
great looking then. There's certainly no reason
why a beautiful young girl couldn't fall in love with a super rich, super sophisticated, super
charming, late 50s American. - I think there was a lot of... Latent sexuality in
Coop, he's known as a... Guy who wasn't afraid
of women, by any chance. But I'll tell you, he was kind. We were on location in Yakima, Washington. Somebody came up to his trailer, and said, there's a couple of kids, and they want your autograph. I would never get out
my trailer and go down. Man got up, walked down,
about a quarter of a mile, signed the autographs, I
saw him come back myself, and you know, that was the kind of sweetness he had in his nature. - We were on a thoroughly
long location in London. Neither of us had our wives along. I remember Coop took me
out to dinner one night, as we were edging our
way between the tables towards the exit, we passed
a table of five or six, this was the time of the
mods and the rockers, and they dressed in rather bizarre ways, and behaved in a rather bizarre fashion, and as we walked past, Coop in the lead, one of them said, "Oh, there
goes the big cowboy star." Coop stopped, and looked at him. And he said, "When you say that, smile." They didn't know that that
was one of the key lines which, in effect, made Coop a star. Suddenly, this kid was looking up, and he wasn't in a trendy
western London restaurant, he was standing in the
middle of a dirt street, and there was Gary Cooper
in front of him. (laughing) Nobody at the table moved
a muscle, or blinked, and Coop looked at him
for a full 40 seconds, and then he nodded and walked out. Coop was settling himself into the back of his Rolls Royce,
straightening the creases on his trousers, and I said, you gave that man a
very good reading, Coop. He said, "Well, I've had a
lot of practice." (laughing) - He was offered a particular
kind of picture, of course, in which the character
was immensely heroic, and I think that he was
happy in that niche, but occasionally
challenges would come along as in the case of The Naked Edge, which is the picture that I did with him, which was his final film. In it, he plays a suspected murderer, way out of character for
anything that he had done before, and he took the part
to spite some very very fierce opposition from
many of his advisors. - I can't believe this. We've been married too many
years, we know each other, we know everything about each other. Do you think a woman
could live with a man, could sleep with him and not know she's sleeping with a murderer? - Do murderers make love differently? (intense music) - Come on, Martha. - He wouldn't have admitted being there just to build up a lie. - He said he was there? - Yes. He saw it happen. - That's unfortunate for him. - He wanted to try
another kind of a persona, another kind of role. The audience was supposed to believe that he was the bad guy. At the end of it, he said,
"They just wouldn't believe it." If he ever felt restricted,
I think maybe it was that, that he couldn't range too far field, 'cause he had to make the public happy. - [Jeffrey] It was a
terrible blow to Hemingway to find out that Cooper was dying, and he found out the
way everybody else did, but seeing James Steward accept this honorary Oscar for
Cooper in March, 1961, and then break down, and sort of... Inadvertently reveal
that Cooper was too sick to come and get the award himself. - He gave me a wonderful lesson, because we went to play golf one day, when he was still well enough to play, and I was thinking, walking
around the golf course, who the hell cares? I mean, so what if you hit a birdie, or an eagle, or if you're
over par, or under par, he's not gonna be around in a month. Why care when you know time is so limited? And in fact, he cared even more. It didn't matter that there wouldn't be very many tomorrows. It was focused on today. When he got the diagnosis of cancer, he opted not to do a lot
of treatments for it. He didn't have as many
options then as they do today. He said, "I've had one
hell of a great life." And he was very at peace with himself. - [George] He was the child of his time, and I doubt if that
could ever happen again, that kind of personality. We are too cynical now. It's like, you can't make a
Frank Capra movie anymore, you know, because there
are no Frank Capras, and there are no Gary Coopers. And it's sad, but true. (slow music)
