Born to Alice and Charles Cooper (not in film business). Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa. His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two reeler by Hans Tissler (an independent producer). Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings, It, and other films.


The Naked Edge (1961): $275,000
The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959): $275,000
They Came to Cordura (1959): $275,000
The Hanging Tree (1959): $275,000
Man of the West (1958): $295,000
Ten North Frederick (1958): $295,000
Love in the Afternoon (1957): $295,000
Friendly Persuasion (1956): $295,000
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955): $295,000
Vera Cruz (1954): $500,000 + 10% gross
Garden of Evil (1954): $300,000
Blowing Wild (1953): $295,000
Return to Paradise (1953): $295,000
Springfield Rifle (1952): $295,000
High Noon (1952): $60,000 + % Profits
Distant Drums (1951): $295,000
You're in the Navy Now (1951): $295,000
Dallas (1950): $295,000
Bright Leaf (1950): $295,000
Task Force (1949): $295,000
The Fountainhead (1949): $295,000
Good Sam (1948): $250,000
Unconquered (1947): $300,000 + 10% of gross
Cloak and Dagger (1946): $200,000
Saratoga Trunk (1945): $200,000
Along Came Jones (1945): $150,000 + % Points
Casanova Brown (1944): $150,000 + % Points
The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944): $200,500
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943): $150,000
The Pride of the Yankees (1942): $150,000
Ball of Fire (1941): $150,000
Sergeant York (1941): $150,000
Meet John Doe (1941): $150,000
North West Mounted Police (1940): $150,000
The Westerner (1940): $150,000
The Real Glory (1939): $150,000
Beau Geste (1939): $150,000
The Cowboy and the Lady (1938): $150,000
The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938): $150,000
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938): $150,000
Souls at Sea (1937): $370,000
The General Died at Dawn (1936): $90,000
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936): $90,000
Desire (1936): $93,000
Peter Ibbetson (1935): $124,000
The Wedding Night (1935): $124,000
Now and Forever (1934): $129,000
Operator 13 (1934): $3,000/week
Design for Living (1933): $44,000
One Sunday Afternoon (1933): $44,000
Today We Live (1933): $44,000
A Farewell to Arms (1932): $2,500/week
If I Had a Million (1932): $30,000
His Woman (1931): $7,000
I Take This Woman (1931): $7,000
City Streets (1931): $7,000
Fighting Caravans (1931): $8,000
Morocco (1930): $6,625
The Spoilers (1930): $5,000
The Texan (1930): $5,000
Only the Brave (1930): $5,000
Seven Days' Leave (1930): $5,000
The Virginian (1929): $3,400/week
The Wolf Song (1929): $750/week
Beau Sabreur (1928): $150/week
Nevada (1927): $150/week
Wings (1927): $150/week
Arizona Bound (1927): $150/week
It (1927): $10
The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926): $50/week
Lightnin' Wins (1926): $50
The Lucky Horseshoe (1925): $20/day
The Drug Store Cowboy (1925): $20

Hobbies: Fishing, hunting, riding, swimming, and taxidermy. Along with actress Mylène Demongeot, Cooper set in motion the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris on June 7 1957. Worked as a Yellowstone Park guide for several seasons before becoming an actor. Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1966. Upon seeing him, a professor in the theater department at Grinnell College recorded "shows no promise." Despite his wholesome screen image, he was an infamous (and privately boastful) lady-killer in reality, allegedly having had affairs with numerous and sometimes very famous leading ladies throughout his career. This was in spite of the fact that he had a faithful wife, Sandra, and that many of his lovers were also married. He was voted the 18th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly. He was voted the 42nd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine. He liked sports and kept in shape with hiking and riding, tennis and golf, archery and skiing, trout fishing and spear fishing, swimming and scuba diving and driving fast cars. He liked boxing. Appeared in 107 movies, 82 of which he starred in. Only 16 of those were filmed in color. And he starred in 14 silent movies. His mother's favorite movie of his is The Pride of the Yankees (1942). He blew the harmonica and strummed the guitar; played backgammon and bridge; grew corn and avocados on the Encino ranch he bought in the early 1930s and loved to work with his tractor in the garden. He starred in two movies that were based on novels by Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (1932) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). From 1938 to 1942 he earned $150,000 per picture. Appeared on the cover of Life magazine November 24, 1941. In 1944 he formed his own production company, International Pictures, with Samuel Goldwyn. His partners were Leo Spitz, William Goetz (who'd recently been ousted from 20th Century Fox) and Nunnally Johnson. They only produced two movies, Casanova Brown (1944) and Along Came Jones (1945). Then in 1946 they sold International Pictures to Universal Pictures, which changed its name to Universal-International. By June 1955 he had made 80 films from which the studio's earned $250 million and he only earned $6 million in salary and percentages. His father Charles Cooper died of pneumonia on September 18th 1946, three months after Gary completed Cloak and Dagger (1946) and 3 days after his father's 81st birthday. Sam Wood directed him in four movies, The Pride of the Yankees (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Casanova Brown (1944) and Saratoga Trunk (1945). Frank Capra directed him in two movies, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Meet John Doe (1941). Appeared in two movies with Marlene Dietrich, Morocco (1930) and Desire (1936). Appeared in three movies with Barbara Stanwyck, Ball of Fire (1941), Meet John Doe (1941) and Blowing Wild (1953). In 1951, after 25 years in show business, his professional reputation declined, and he was dropped from the Motion Picture Herald's list of the top 10 Box Office performers. In the following year he made a big comeback at the age of fifty-one with High Noon (1952). He turned down both Stagecoach (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939). He left America and Hollywood and didn't return for 18 months. During that time he was in Hawaii, Mexico and France and shot four films: Return to Paradise (1953), Blowing Wild (1953), Garden of Evil (1954) and Vera Cruz (1954). Was romantically linked with Marlene Dietrich He declined roles in The Big Trail (1930), Stagecoach (1939) and Red River (1948). All of these were subsequently played by John Wayne. On 16 April 1958 he entered the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital for a full face-lift and other cosmetic surgery by Dr John Converse, one of the leading plastic surgeons in America. Newspaper articles commenting on the effects of the operation said his face now looked quite different and the procedure had not been successful. In the spring of 1960 he had two operations, one for prostate cancer and then after that a part of his colon removed which was cancerous also. The doctors were sure that they had gotten all of it. His body strengthened and he made the movie The Naked Edge (1961) in England, but while he was making this film he had a lot of pain in his neck and shoulders. When he returned home from England he went back to the doctor and it was then that he had to be told the cancer had metastasized to his lungs and bones. As he did in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) he took it in his stride and said, "If it is God's will, that's all right too." He opted not to take very much treatment. After James Stewart revealed to the world that Cooper was dying of cancer, messages poured in from such friends and well-wishers as Pope John XXIII, former Vice President Richard Nixon, Henry Fonda, Pablo Picasso, Queen Elizabeth II of England, Princess Grace (Grace Kelly) of Monaco, John Wayne, Ernest Hemingway, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bob Hope, Henry Hathaway, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer, William Goetz, Mary Livingstone (Mrs. Jack Benny) and Jack Benny, Gloria Stewart (Mrs. James Stewart) and James Stewart, Charles Feldman and Constance and Jerry Wald. The newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy called from Washington and couldn't get through on the busy Cooper phone, but kept calling. He got through on the second day to talk to Gary for seven minutes. Along with Sidney Poitier, he is the most represented actor on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time, with five of his films on the list. They are: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) at #83, Sergeant York (1941) at #57, Meet John Doe (1941) at #49, High Noon (1952) at #27 and The Pride of the Yankees (1942) at #22. It was testament to Cooper's durability that Charlton Heston, already a major star following The Ten Commandments (1956), was prepared to play a supporting role in The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). Heston was impressed that the veteran actor, fifty-eight years old and in declining health, was still able to perform his own stunts, including being submerged underwater for long periods of time. In his book "The Actor's Life", Heston recalled he sensed early on it would be Cooper's picture but he didn't mind, because of all Cooper himself had meant to Heston, even as a child. In the late 1950s, his voracious eating habits finally caught up with him. After decades of incomparable thinness, Cooper put on 15 lbs, pushing his weight up to 190 lbs, which on his 6'3" frame was still slender. During the 1944 presidential election the phrase, "I've been for Roosevelt before ... but not this time!" was personally attributed to Cooper, forming the basis of full-page advertisements in major newspapers, paid for by the Republican National Committee. Cooper was extremely active on behalf of the Republican candidate, New York's governor Thomas E. Dewey. He gave speeches, did entertaining for fund raisers, met with Dewey in Los Angeles, and did some personal campaigning in the film community. Whether Cooper had ever been "for Roosevelt before" is questionable. Possibly he voted for him in 1936 during the second term landslide. If so, it was not publicly disclosed. Cooper's activities were as unpopular as Democrat Humphrey Bogart's endorsement of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that year. The studio called in both stars and told them to stop antagonizing fans who did not share their political beliefs. In 1940, Cooper actively campaigned for Wendell Willkie as the Republican challenger to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's quest for a third term of office. Cooper believed Roosevelt was already too powerful, and would become more so. He told Cecelia Ager though that he advocated most of the New Deal reforms and believed the GOP made a mistake by not emphasizing their intention of retaining most of them. He said, "There's no going back to the ways of the Old Guard." Willkie, a well known womanizer, became firm friends with the actor. His lovers included Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Carole Lombard, Lupe Velez, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him. There has been much speculation over the years over whether Cooper's close friend Ernest Hemingway may have had latent homosexual tendencies. There is an easy agreement among Hemingway scholars that Papa, as he insisted Cooper should call him, was never actively homosexual, but the fact that he protested his masculinity so much in his novels and in real life has aroused suspicion. Hemingway's tendency to beautify in Cooper the qualities he found beastly in others is provocative. One Hemingway scholar maintained Papa was profoundly impressed that Cooper was such a stud. He said, "I believe that in his mind he loved Gary sexually, but I believe furthermore that Gary Cooper never once suspected it. If I am correct, that proves the beauty of Gary's naiveté, which Papa always found so charming." In 1958 Cooper had a private audience with Pope Pius XII at the Vatican, and in the following year became a convert to Roman Catholicism. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Unamerican Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Other friendly witnesses appearing on the same day as Cooper were Robert Taylor, Robert Montgomery, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan and the aging Adolphe Menjou. Montgomery had long been active in Republican politics as a committeeman and later would serve as White House adviser during the Eisenhower administration. Murphy would serve as a Republican senator from California, with a reactionary voting record. Reagan would become Governor of California and the national champion of extreme conservatism. Taylor, Menjou and Cooper would all retreat gradually from the political fracas, but only Cooper would make a show of repudiating what he had done. Although he never recanted his testimony, or said he regretted having been a friendly witness, he became conciliatory during the subsequent period of the blacklist. As an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. After the release of High Noon (1952) , an allegory for blacklisting, he stood by the screenwriter Carl Foreman despite pressure from the militant Hedda Hopper. Immediately after the HUAC appearance, the films of Cooper, Taylor, Montgomery, Murphy, Reagan and Menjou were banned first in Hungary, then in Czechoslovakia, and eventually in most of the Iron Curtain countries. So were those of Ginger Rogers and, curiously, those of tenor Allan Jones, seen usually in minor features and certainly no militant. On the witness stand Cooper had made light of the communists. Sure, they were in Hollywood just like everywhere else, but they were only a small faction giving the large patriotic body of the film community a bad name it didn't deserve. After his testimony, Cooper received a standing ovation and vigorous applause. He later told Robert Taylor, "I got a much bigger hand than you did." Liberals, who never forgave the other friendly witnesses, generally made an exception for Cooper. Separated from his wife Rocky in May 1951, mainly over his affair with Patricia Neal. They did not live together again until July 1954. His estate was valued at $9 million at the time of his death in 1961. Although he had said long ago that he would make no more biopics, he signed for The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955). It was a poor Otto Preminger film and even Mitchell's widow expressed disappointment with Cooper's performance. Possibly the story had appealed to Cooper on political grounds and Mitchell may have been a hero of his - the general who accused the government of neglecting military needs. Cooper went on Ed Sullivan's TV show to promote the film and home viewers were quite disappointed - David Shipman referred to Cooper's "effeminate mannerisms in his TV interviews". An uncomfortable aspect of They Came to Cordura (1959) was that besides looking far too old for his character, Cooper was looking so ill, and was actually filming against medical advice. Towards the end of the movie he was dragged a hundred yards along the ground by a railroad handcar, something Stanley Kauffmann complained about in the "New Republic". He was a close friend and admirer of Pablo Picasso. With the critical and commercial disaster You're in the Navy Now (1951), the word got out that Cooper was finished. He couldn't even sell a good picture that was a sure-fire formula to begin with - or once had been. He had disappeared completely from the Motion Picture Herald's annual survey of the top ten box office stars. He had been on the list for nine successive years, moving up and down but always there, proof that he was still a guarantee if only as a commodity star. Now he had lost even that. As the host of It's a Big Country (1951), Cooper got fabulous press coverage during filming but after a few engagements it was withdrawn out of embarrassment. It wasted a warehouse of first rate talent - Fredric March, William Powell, Gene Kelly, Ethel Barrymore, Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and others. Cooper made another routine western, Distant Drums (1951), and then he made the picture which would prove to be an enormous comeback vehicle for him - High Noon (1952). Turned down James Mason's role as an aging movie star falling on hard times in A Star Is Born (1954). Lived with Anderson Lawler, a contract player at Paramount, in 1929. In 1925 he befriended another young, struggling, would-be actor named Walter Brennan. At one point, they were even appearing as a team at casting offices, and although Cooper emerged in major and leading roles first, they would work together in the good years, too. Most memorably they starred in The Westerner (1940) together, where the general critical consensus was that Brennan's underplayed performance as Judge Roy Bean had stolen the film from Cooper. After talking with Carl Foreman on the set of High Noon (1952), Cooper realized there had not been an attempt by Communists to infiltrate Hollywood, and later regretted his part in founding the right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Writer Ayn Rand worked as an extra in Hollywood when she came to the U.S. from Russia, and she promptly became a fan of Cooper. When her novel "The Fountainhead" was made into a film, Rand was thrilled that Cooper was starring. Cooper's speech in a courtroom is one that Rand worked on for a very long time. When filming was over, Cooper admitted to her that he hadn't understood it. He won an Oscar for playing Alvin C. York in Sergeant York (1941), making him one of 12 actors to win the Award for playing a real person who was still alive at the evening of the Award ceremony (as of 2007). The other 11 actors and their respective performances are: Spencer Tracy for playing 'Father Edward Flanagan' in Boys Town (1938), Patty Duke for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), Jason Robards for playing Benjamin C. Bradlee in All the President's Men (1976), Robert De Niro for playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), Sissy Spacek for playing Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), Susan Sarandon for playing Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (1995), Geoffrey Rush for playing 'David Helfgott' in Shine (1996), Julia Roberts for playing Erin Brockovich-Ellis in Erin Brockovich (2000), Jim Broadbent for playing John Bayley in Iris (2001/I) and Helen Mirren for playing Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006). Met Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at a luncheon organized by Charles Feldman at Twentieth Century Fox on 19 September 1959. Kruschev personally invited Cooper and his wife and daughter on a six-day, United States Information Agency-sponsored trip to Moscow and Leningrad. After Cooper entertained some Soviet dignitaries at his house in Hollywood, Hedda Hopper publicly denounced him as "soft on Commies". In May 1974 his body was removed from Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles and reburied, under a three-ton boulder from a Montauk quarry, in Sacred Heart Cemetery in Southampton, New York near his family on the East Coast. He considered himself to be miscast in Peter Ibbetson (1935), The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and Ten North Frederick (1958). Was the original visual basis for pulp hero Doc Savage. Before his cancer was found to be terminal, he had intended to play James Stewart's role in How the West Was Won (1962). He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. He is the step-uncle of Brooke Shields. Her grandfather is Cooper's wife's step-father, Paul Shields. Although he was in failing health, his friend, director Henry Hathaway, had arranged to use him in his segments of How the West Was Won (1962). Upon his death, James Stewart, his best friend, accepted the role. Born Frank Cooper, he changed his first name to Gary at the suggestion of his agent, Nan Collins, whose hometown was Gary, Indiana.