Gary Cooper's Legacy in Southampton and Beyond

Gary Cooper was not an obvious movie star. Most famous actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age stand out because they chose a type and doubled down on it. The suave asides of Humphrey Bogart, the cowboy swagger of John Wayne, and the carefree energy of Barbara Stanwyck were among the many trademarks that helped establish a baseline for audience expectations.

With Cooper, however, the expectation was only a starting point. Though he generally portrayed soft-spoken, good-natured men, they populated a range of genres that ran from the silent era through postwar America. His filmography epitomizes the scope of Hollywood storytelling at a critical moment in its evolution. Practically everything one expects from mass-market studio movies – comedy and tragedy alike, always with a strong humanistic edge – manifests throughout Cooper’s career.

Working with masterful comedic auteurs like Howard Hawks (Ball of Fire) and Ernst Lubitsch (Design for Living, Bluebeard’s Eight Wife), Cooper was flustered, well-intentioned, and often disaster-prone. In the hands of a melodrama master like Frank Borzage (A Farewell to Arms), Cooper delivered a more somber turn. Frank Capra turned Cooper into a personification of moral awakening in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. With High Noon, he was the ultimate solitary hero, forced to confront a cause on his own when his community decides to leave him in the dust.

Considering this astonishing range, it’s ironic that decades later, The Sopranos would find Tony Soprano wondering, “What ever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type?” The answer is obvious: Cooper has been with us all along, in movies that stand the test of time, creating a template for understanding America in the process.

Cooper was born on May 7, 1901, and died on May 10, 1961. His life spanned the Great Depression, two World Wars, and dramatic social change. The nation asserted its global dominance and the myth of the American dream was born. In many of his movies, Cooper played characters struggling to find it – through romance, riches, and even on the battlefield.

Off-screen, the Montana-born Cooper was himself a kind of Western archetype: a soft-spoken outdoorsman and family man who, despite some personal hardships, maintained a core set of values throughout his life (even before he converted to Catholicism). Cooper wasn’t a soapbox-style activist, but he sublimated his beliefs into the circumstances around him. He avoided the self-destructive whirlwind of the Hollywood party circuit in favor of a quiet family routine and made key choices indicative of a broader worldview.

Cooper was a child of immigrants and maintained an international network of creatives that included Pablo Picasso. While he campaigned against Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cooper advocated for New Deal reforms. And despite his Republican allegiances, he refused to testify against High Noon screenwriter Carl Foreman during Hollywood’s anti-communist blacklist. Cooper was also a big advocate of the country’s original inhabitants. He held the Native Americans he met in his childhood in high regard, and continued to support indigenous communities throughout his life.

“My father was always deeply upset at the way not only Hollywood but our country treated our Native American citizens, both in reality and on screen,” his daughter, Maria Cooper Janis, wrote in 2022, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences formally apologized to Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather for mistreatment by the industry. Twenty years ago, Cooper Janis established the Gary Cooper Endowed Fund to support indigenous students at USC.

The Coopers were regulars in Hollywood, but spent most of their downtime in Southampton. Here was a movie star living off the grid like few others. Ask around town and stories of Cooper’s presence here abound. He would devour the seafood at Catena’s, roam the beach, search for osprey nests, and hang at the beach club. When fans approached him with a tentative “Mr. Cooper?”, he was known to say “Call me Coop.”

Nobody today recalls Cooper’s time in Southampton better than his daughter. The 87-year-old New York resident wrote a vivid, passionate ode to her father and his impact on her with the 2017 tome Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers.

For years, she has been the caretaker of his legacy. For the first annual Gary Cooper Festival, Cooper Janis will attend screenings of High Noon and The Pride of the Yankees. In preparation for her visit, she spoke to the Playhouse about the family’s Southampton history and how his career continues to resonate with her today.

ERIC KOHN: When did you first realize your father was a famous movie star?

MARIA COOPER JANIS: I think my parents very intelligently kept me away from all that. I never saw him in a movie until my seventh birthday. We had a little party at home. We had a 16mm projector and we ran the movie The Plainsman with Jean Arthur. That was the first time I’d seen my father on screen, in action, and tortured. [laughs] It was an incredible experience because here I am sitting in my living room watching my father being hung over a bonfire with his hands tied above him as he’s lowered into the fire to make him talk. I was understandably freaked out and turned around behind me. My father was running the projection machine. He saw me looking distressed. He looked at me, smiled, and winked. When I turned back to the screen, I instantly understood that this was reality, and on the screen was fantasy. The whole dynamic of movies became so clear to me at the age of seven.

The first Gary Cooper Festival includes three of his films: Ball of Fire, High Noon, and The Pride of the Yankees. These are all quite different and really showcase your father’s range. What do you make of the contrasts between his different star vehicles?

Well, I’m very glad you’ve programmed this threesome as a launching pad because it gives a wonderful range. Ball of Fire has been underrated even by classic Hollywood fans. My father loved comedy, not slapstick pie-in-the-face comedy, but he’s so good in the film and I’m glad the audience can rediscover him in that role. High Noon is obvious and Pride of the Yankees is a forever classic.

In your book you talk about how your father was close with Fred Zinnemann, who directed High Noon. The film was an allegory for the groupthink around the Hollywood blacklist, but it has continuing relevance to this day.

I think that’s part of the reason why he did it. There was something special about it. Fred was a close family friend. High Noon really speaks to human nature. I think the way Carl Foreman constructed the screenplay does that. He took the name of the town, Hadleyville, from a short story by Mark Twain. There were many similarities with the town, which had these groups we form in society.

How much did he discuss the themes of his films with you?

My father was not one to “bring his work home.” I’m sure he and my mother spoke about it, but I was never a part of that hemming and hawing. He was asked many times what makes him choose the roles he takes and his answer was pretty simple. He wanted to portray the best a man can be.

Sadly, the last movie he made was The Naked Edge. The film was kind of a bust. The whole premise was that the audience had to buy that the Gary Cooper character was a murderer, and they didn’t, from the get-go. The studio tried all sorts of marketing tricks but they just wouldn’t go for it. Early on, Sam Goldwyn advised my father. “Coop,” he said, “you must never let your audience down.” Part of that is the expectation of who your character is supposed to be. You develop your character to be the best a man can be.

There were many roles where he was annoyed with himself artistically, but he was very consistent in sticking to his own principles and that the characters he chose would be people that tried to live their lives with those principles. They were very flawed but they were always making the basic attempt to reach higher.

In that regard, Pride of the Yankees stands out. In that movie, Lou Gherig is determined to live a full life even when faced with his own mortality. Did you see any echoes of that in your own household?

In looking at the whole range of his career, I think there is a consistency in who he was as a person and an actor. As life throws more curveballs than home runs, certainly the Lou Gherig story is an unbeatable exercise in courage and grace under pressure. My father did a tour in the South Pacific during the war. He was with Bob Hope, Betty Grable, and it was a lot of cha-cha, very funny jokes. He felt very embarrassed and insecure. He told the colonel at one of the bases where they stopped, “I can’t tell jokes. What am I going to say to the guys?” There would be a thousand of them sitting on the ground in front of them. The colonel said, “They all want you to recite the Lou Gherig speech.”

I’ve got a wonderful little photograph of him sitting under a tent, as it’s pouring rain, while he tries to scribble down from memory the exact words that Lou Gherig spoke. Then he stood up and delivered it to the troops. They asked for it everywhere he went. Many of these guys wouldn’t come home and they knew it, so it was a great soul connection there.

What’s your favorite scene from your father’s films?

There’s a scene in High Noon that comes and goes so quickly. I suspect most people don’t get it because it passes so fast. It’s one of the most important messages of the film and it’s a message about our behavior today. When all the bad guys are after him and he’s left alone to fight them, the two henchmen have been killed, but Frank Miller – the leader – is stalking the marshall. So my father’s hiding and Miller’s on the street. The marshall has a clear sightline to the marshall’s back. He doesn’t take the cheap or easy or safe shot to save his own life. His moral conviction is that you do not shoot a man in the back.

You asked Tom Hanks to write the introduction to your memoir. How do you see his legacy as reflective of your father’s?

I think in his Hollywood and non-Hollywood life, Tom has lived the way my father would. My father was never caught up in the egotistic, actorly mentality of the industry. His legacy was that he loved the craft, the challenge of portraying different characters, and researching the roles. Stanislavsky said that Gary Cooper was the most naturalistic actor. My father felt that if he really understood who the character was, he wouldn’t have to be acting; he could deliver the dialogue with honesty and integrity.

How did your family wind up in Southampton?

It came about organically because my mother’s family was from there. When my mother was in her early teens, her mother remarried and they built the house that I grew up in on Ox Pasture Road. It’s still there today and it looks the same aside from a different color paint job and a few less trees. My grandfather was an avid golfer and he had a pitch-and-putt green on the lawn. The house had a tennis court in the back. No swimming pool. I spent summers there. If my father wasn’t doing a film, he loved escaping to the ocean to spend time with my family. My grandparents were very young. There was total camaraderie.

In those days, the Hamptons were much less built out. There were still cabbage fields behind our property. My father would disappear all afternoon driving with his binoculars looking for osprey nests. He loved spotting birds, not shooting them as games. He did duck and pheasant shooting, but he loved to find nature.

I understand your father was a regular at Catena’s Fish Market.

It was a very sweet moment when my mother and Dr. Converse, her second husband, built the house we had on Pond Lane. We just sold it a couple of years ago. When my mother built their house, we decided to move my father’s remains from the Holy Cross Cemetery in Santa Monica out to Southampton because the family was there. So the day came and the hearse arrived from the airport with my father’s coffin. It came to our house first. There was the hearse, my father and I in the car, my mother’s companion, and two close friends. She had ordered some food for a supper we had afterwards from Catena’s. As we drove out to the cemetery, all of a sudden, the delivery truck for Catena’s Fish Market pulled up and the driver said, “Can we join you?” My mother said, “Come on!”

It was wonderful. This funeral cortege led up the rear by Catena’s market. I tell you, my father could put away three or four dozen clams in one sitting, given the chance. He was pretty keen on two or three lobsters, too. He had quite an appetite!

Where else did your father spend his time in Southampton?

Whenever we arrived from California, we would always tell my grandmother, “We’ve got to hit Crutchley’s Crullers.” I remember Mr. and Mrs. Crutchley. They were a Norman Rockwell couple, Americana at its best. Mrs. Crutchley was so sweet and always had her hair up in a bun. There was powdered sugar all over the place. When we would go back to California, we would order four dozen cruller holes. They were very special.

Where else did you go?

We’d go to Silver’s cigar store.

Which is now Dopo Argento, Italian for “after silver.”

Oh, that’s lovely! And went to Shippy’s. Shippy had a lot of mutual friends with my mother and father. They would share a lot of war stories.

What was your family’s beach routine?

He played a lot of golf and tennis at the club. We would usually spend two-and-a-half hours every morning at the beach and then go to Paul Shields’ house. My father loved it. He had everything – the beach, the ocean, he could go hunting. In the mid-fifties, my mother really introduced the new modern surf boards to Southampton. We were very close in California to Peter Lawford, the British actor, who was married to Patricia Kennedy. Peter was a big surfer and knew all the surfing crew from his friends in Malibu and Hawaii. Those were the first guys that made the light fiberglass surfboards. They used to be redwood and much heavier. My mother had a special board made for her and brought it to Southampton. Everybody’s jaws dropped when they saw her walking on the beach with that surfboard.

Was your father a good surfer?

No, because when he was very young in Montana, he was driving in a jeep with a school friend and they flipped the car. My father had a broken hip and he never went to a doctor. The hip mended terribly. He couldn’t straddle a surf board and leap to his feet. It wouldn’t have been possible. In later years, he had to choose the horses he rode very carefully. He was a helluva rider anyway.

How about our movie theater?

I remember standing in line a lot. We would go and stand there like anyone else. Occasionally we would see his films. It wasn’t necessarily what was playing while we were there.

These were the days before the crush of paparazzi and selfies. What was it like for your father to be a celebrity in Southampton?

I wouldn’t say there was ever a problem approaching him. He was always very approachable. People granted him the same respect that he granted them. He always liked to be kind to kids and go out of his way if someone came up. A woman came up and said, “My granddaughter wants your autograph.” But the daughter was six years and didn’t care. Clearly, her mother wanted the autograph! It was low key. People didn’t make a big fuss about him. He became a regular. It wasn’t a big deal.

Speaking of which, your father’s gravesite in Southampton is very low key. He and your mother have these simple, unadorned gravestones that don’t attract a lot of attention. How did that come about?

That stone was due to my mother’s choosing. She wanted to give my father something there was in keeping with his background in the West, rocks, boulders. We would go down to Montauk and hike around. She went down to the rock quarry near Montauk by herself and chose that stone. She had to get permission from the church. It was a bit of a problem at the beginning because there were cemetery rules about things being gray and vertical. The pastor at the time told my mother they had rules. So my mother, god bless her, said, “Father, didn’t Jesus say, ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church.” And you’re telling me I can’t have a rock as my husband’s resting place?

Well played.

There’s the rock!

The Gary Cooper Festival runs May 9-11. Showtimes are available here.