Cloak and Dagger*

Cloak and Dagger

Directed by Fritz Lang. 106 mins. (1946)

Gary Cooper – Prof. Alvah Jesper

A mild-mannered American physics professor is recruited by government agents to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Europe and gather intelligence on Germany’s atomic research, forcing him into a dangerous world of espionage, resistance fighters, and moral peril far from his academic life.

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

In one walking shot, Cooper’s limp and leg brace—resulting from a youthful car accident—are briefly visible. There is no indication this was intended as part of the character, offering an unplanned glimpse of the actor’s real-life injury.

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