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The Story of Dr. Wassell

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The Spoilers

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The Real Glory

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The Plainsman

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The Naked Edge

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The Lives of a Bengal Lancer

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The Legion of the Condemned

MV5BZWMwMWQ1YjAtYWU5OC00ODE5LWEzNWMtYmJhNDlmYTk5YTdkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUxODE0MDY@._V1_.jpg — Legion of the Condemned

**Directed by William A. Wellman. 80 mins. (1928)**
**Gary Cooper – Gale Price**
After heartbreak in civilian life, a disillusioned American aviator joins the French Foreign Legion during World War I, only to confront a fateful mission involving the woman he once loved—now a suspected spy behind enemy lines.
Also starring Fay Wray, Barry Norton, Lane Chandler, and Francis McDonald.
This silent wartime drama reunited Gary Cooper with *Wings* director William A. Wellman and reused aerial combat footage originally shot for that film. Long considered lost, only fragments of *Legion of the Condemned* survive today.

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The Last Outlaw

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The Hanging Tree*

MARIA’S NOTES

The Hanging Tree is a film that was particularly close to my father’s heart. Certain things resonated for him relating to his Montana childhood, the lure of the gold rush days in 1873 and many of the flaws in our human nature so graphically depicted in the plot of the film. As the main character, a doctor named Joe Frail, it also provided my father with a chance to play a much darker role than usually attributed to Gary Cooper. The atypical Cooper role in the persona of Dr. Frail is not one his public was used to seeing him in and he relished the chance to play a role that stretched him. The superb cast of Maria Schell (her first American film), the wonderful Karl Malden, seasoned director Delmer Daves, came together to make this the unique film that it is. Del Daves sometimes seemed to vanish from the camp near Yakima, Washington. In the course of filming, it was discovered that he was an avid amateur geologist and rock/mineral collector and he would venture off on his own personal expeditions to find a special kind of ancient rock formation – or perhaps it was the remnants of some gold nuggets flushed out of the mountains after a heavy rain. At one point, Daves took ill and Karl Malden came to the rescue encouraged by my father to take the reins as needed. I still have a gold nugget from the site that my father made into a pendant.

As I watched my father Gary Cooper's film The Hanging Tree now, 60 plus years after it was made, I am more aware than ever of how natural Gary Cooper’s acting style was - though I don’t think he would have referred to himself as having an “acting style.” He worked at immersing himself in the character and then let his intuitive feelings and emotions about who that character was, what drove him to be and do the things he did, come naturally then he said, “I don’t have to act.” As an unusual Gary Cooper type in The Hanging Tree, he portrays a much “darker” hero and his face reflects layers of inner conflicts not usually identified with a typical Western hero, particularly Gary Cooper. His character, a doctor named Joe Frail, is trying to escape his past memories - most raw, his personal wounding by his betrayal by his wife with his own brother. Maria Schell, the beautiful talented actress from Germany, is given her first American film and she is given a more complex female role than those usually handed to women in a Western film - she is neither a prostitute nor a school marm. There is a haunting musical score by Max Steiner and performed by Marty Robbins that threads through the film as it captures the emotional drama of anger, sadness and ultimately love which is portrayed at the end of the film.

Maria Cooper Janis

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The General Died at Dawn

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The Fountainhead*

MARIA’S NOTES

Ayn Rand, adored by many, disliked by many. Her philosophy and persona I find abhorrent. One of her famous novels, The Fountainhead, became the movie vehicle for my father to star in - playing a loosely reminiscent characterization of the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In her novel, the character Howard Roark, adheres to her “philosophy of man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life.” This is just so opposite to everything Gary Cooper stood for - it was a most curious artistic stretch for my father to portray that kind of person - someone whose life glorified selfish individualism. Just about the opposite as you could get from Mr. Deeds or Meet John Doe

Roark is a ruthless character and Ayn Rand insisted that Gary Cooper was the only person she wanted to play the role. Warner Brothers, who produced the film, originally thought of Humphrey Bogart to play my father’s part as they felt he could portray a man more fanatical and extreme. But he did not cut the mustard with Ayn Rand as she wanted the romantic figure that Gary Cooper represented - and she called the shots even to the point of writing the script herself. She was able to intimidate Warner Brothers and it was quite amazing that the film in those days got released because of quite sexually exploitive and violent scenes which the censors tried to curtail.

It was only the second film for the budding young actress Patricia Neal who fit the role of Dominique Francon, a sexually aggressive woman who is a manipulator, seducer and a destroyer. The relationship on screen between Howard and Dominique was volcanic and in many cases very over the top. The film, at the time, received very poor reviews but somehow through the years it has become a kind of cult classic.

Maria Cooper Janis

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The Cowboy and the Lady

The Cowboy & The Lady

**Directed by H. C. Potter. 91 mins. (1938)**
**Gary Cooper – Stretch Willoughby**
A naïve cowboy visiting Palm Beach becomes romantically involved with a sheltered socialite seeking freedom from her strict political family, forcing her to choose between society expectations and true love.
Also starring Merle Oberon, Patsy Kelly, Walter Brennan, Fuzzy Knight, Henry Kolker, and Mabel Todd.
A romantic comedy blending Western and high-society worlds, the film won the Academy Award for Best Sound. During production, Henry Kolker replaced Thomas Mitchell as the heroine’s father, requiring all of Mitchell’s completed scenes to be reshot.

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The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell*

MARIA’S NOTES

Once again, it was intriguing to my father Gary Cooper to try to understand and to portray a character, an individual who stood up against the establishment, fought for a controversial cause and plunged ahead with cost and risk to himself and his career.

Development of aviation in America as chronicled in movies started with my father’s portrayal in the 1927 movie Wings and culminated in The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell. This film exposes clearly the conflicts between the different branches in the Armed Services of the U.S. at that time which was heavily dominated by Navy interests. The brilliant Army pilot Billy Mitchell in WWI was quickly promoted to Brigadier General. Many then felt he was going rogue when he became a strong critic of the dominance of the Navy and he strongly believed that the success and future of warfare rested in developing serious air power. He was also a very strong advocate for the use of submarines in combat strategy.

His passion for his vision caused him to be stripped of his military rankings and ended up in a trial and a Court Marshall. By 1941, due to Billy Mitchell’s efforts and outspokenness, the Department of Defense was eventually established.

He was a little understood hero but one that Gary Cooper felt to be portrayed.

Schedule for veteran’s day in November, please look up correct date

One of the deep pleasures of recent years has been Byron and my chance to know some of the Alvin York family. Sergeant York, the movie which won my father his first Academy Award, tells the inspirational true story of one of America’s real life heroes. York fought for his country in World War I against Germany although he was a pacifist in his nature. His simple honor and courage on the battlefield won him his Medal of Honor.