Gary Cooper

flashback

Vanity Fair, October 1935

'If you made up a character like Coop, nobody would believe it." Or so Ernest Hemingway said of his safari soul mate Gary Cooper, who was, in fact, the inspiration for Robert Jordan in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hollywood's favorite Everyman was certainly a man of contrasts, beginning his career in "Poverty Row" Westerns, riding horses the way he did on his father's Montana ranch—when he wasn't attending British grammar school. His early lonesome-cowboy roles were upstaged by his offscreen stunts as "Paramount's paramount skirt-chaser" with the unholy jazz baby, Clara Bow, and the "Mexican Spitfire," Lupe Velez. And the man who immortalized the syllables "yup" and "nope" held court with Cole Porter and Elsa Maxwell, and entertained Windsors and Mountbattens at his Hamptons home with his stylish wife, Rocky. Here, in 1935, he had plenty to smile about: he made both the best-dressed list and Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Cooper was one of only five men to win two starring Oscars: for Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952). In 1961, Jimmy Stewart tearfully accepted Coop's third, an honorary award, a month before he died of cancer, at sixty.