Gary Cooper off camera : a daughter remembers / Maria Cooper Janis ; with an introduction by Tom Hanks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Janis, Maria Cooper.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cooper, Gary, 1901-1961.

Cooper, Gary.

Janis, Maria Cooper.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

175 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Harry N. Abrams, 1999.

Summary:

With his high brow and chiseled features, his combed-back hair and 6-foot-3-inch lanky frame, Gary Cooper (1901-1961) was handsome in a way that personified Hollywood--and Hollywood glamour--in its heyday. He was the seamless actor who became our Sheriff Kane or Lou Gehrig or Sergeant York. Gary Cooper was, in short, an American icon when actors still seemed to personify the hopes and ambitions of a thriving nation.

But as his daughter Maria shows us in this moving tribute to her father, Gary Cooper off camera was the real McCoy, and his relationship with his wife, Rocky, and only child formed the center of his personal universe. For this book Maria Cooper Janis shows photos from family scrapbooks, she quotes letters from her father to her and her mother, and shares with us personal stories about her father and a charmed life growing up in Hollywood.

Here, in Gary Cooper Off Camera, we meet the father of every child's dreams--gentle, giving, loving. And we meet the real Cooper, more a man of the outdoors than of the limelight. He loved to ride (he performed his own stunt scenes on film), would hunker down in a duck blind at 4 A.M., and was an expert marksman. We learn of his passion for American Indians; his hobbies, among them buying custom-tooled fine cars; his reverence for nature; and especially his friendships. In Ernest Hemingway, Cooper found a soul mate of the outdoors; Sun Valley was their turf from 1940 until early in 1961 when they said their final good-byes. We see Cooper skiing with Clark Gable and Ingrid Bergman, clowning with Pablo Picasso, partying with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, and his great friend Jimmy Stewart, and sharing screen credits as well as fun with family friend and director Fred Zinnemann.

For all his fame, Gary Cooper had a common touch: he was just as comfortable talking with "the guys" in a bar in his boyhood Montana as he was giving parties with Rocky at their Brentwood home or taking scuba-diving lessons with his family. As one of Hollywood's best-loved stars, Cooper had entree to the fine life no matter where he traveled, but it was on his family that Cooper's love focused. Writing to his wife and daughter from location in Samoa in 1952: "I miss my dear girls. You seem so far away and it seems so long ago that I saw you both waving good-bye to me. That's the sweetest picture I'll ever see."

In his witty and perceptive introduction, Tom Hanks writes that Gary Cooper "had a simple yet mysterious star quality." And as we see in this unforgettable portrait, he was also a first-class humanitarian, a great friend, and a devoted father.

Contents:

Letter to My Father 8

Early Time 11

Private Time 16

Veronica (Rocky)

Lover, Wife, Friend

An Only Daughter Remembers

Cooper Being Cooper

Gary Cooper and His Indian "Brothers"

In the South Pacific

Back to the Homestead

Family Time

The Three Coopers

And Maria Makes Three

The Traveling Coopers

"See Naples and Die"

Living Our Good Life

Family and Friends

Fred Zinnemann

A Special Friendship

Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper

Papa and Poppa

Play Time 106

Sun Valley

Picasso and Cooper

Sports and Hobbies

For the Love of Cars

Hollywood Parties

Underwater Buddies

Movie Time 138

A Natural at Westerns

Real-Life Heroes

"The Last Performance"

End Time 160

Saying Good-bye

"Sunset in the West".

ISBN:

0810941309

OCLC:

40752968