Gary Cooper Movies
American actor Gary Cooper was born on the Montana ranch of his wealthy father, and educated in a prestigious school in England -- a dichotomy that may explain how the adult Cooper was able to combine the ruggedness of the frontiersman with the poise of a cultured gentleman. Injured in an auto accident while attending Wesleyan College, he convalesced on his dad's ranch, perfecting the riding skills that would see him through many a future Western film.After trying to make a living at his chosen avocation of political cartooning, Cooper was encouraged by two friends to seek employment as a cowboy extra in movies. Agent Nan Collins felt she could get more prestigious work for the handsome, gangling Cooper, and, in 1926, she was instrumental in obtaining for the actor an important role in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Movie star Clara Bow also took an interest in Cooper, seeing to it that he was cast in a couple of her films. Cooper really couldn't act at this point, but he applied himself to his work in a brief series of silent Westerns for his home studio, Paramount Pictures, and, by 1929, both his acting expertise and his popularity had soared. Cooper's first talking-picture success was The Virginian (1929), in which he developed the taciturn, laconic speech patterns that became fodder for every impressionist on radio, nightclubs, and television.
Cooper alternated between tie-and-tails parts in Design for Living (1933) and he-man adventurer roles in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) for most of the 1930s; in 1941, he was honored with an Oscar for Sergeant York, a part for which he was the personal choice of the real-life title character, World War I hero Alvin York. One year later, Cooper scored in another film biography, Pride of the Yankees. As baseball great Lou Gehrig, the actor was utterly convincing (despite the fact that he'd never played baseball and wasn't a southpaw like Gehrig), and left few dry eyes in the audiences with his fade-out "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech. In 1933, Cooper married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. Too old for World War II service, Cooper gave tirelessly of his time in hazardous South Pacific personal-appearance tours.
Ignoring the actor's indirect participation in the communist witch-hunt of the 1940s, Hollywood held Cooper in the highest regard as an actor and a man. Even those co-workers who thought that Cooper wasn't exerting himself at all when filming were amazed to see how, in the final product, Cooper was actually outacting everyone else, albeit in a subtle, unobtrusive manner. Consigned mostly to Westerns by the 1950s (including the classic High Noon [1952]), Cooper retained his box-office stature. Privately, however, he was plagued with painful, recurring illnesses, and one of them developed into lung cancer. Discovering the extent of his sickness, Cooper kept the news secret, although hints of his condition were accidentally blurted out by his close friend Jimmy Stewart during the 1961 Academy Awards ceremony, where Stewart was accepting a career-achievement Oscar for Cooper. One month later, and less than two months after his final public appearance as the narrator of a TV documentary on the "real West," Cooper died; to fans still reeling from the death of Clark Gable six months earlier, it seemed that Hollywood's Golden Era had suddenly died, as well. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1925
Square-jawed Jack Holt and ornery Noah Beery were the stars of Paramount's popular Zane Grey adaptations. Their best efforts were probably their first two films, the epic Wanderer of the Wasteland and North of 36 (both in 1924). Although lesser in scope, Wild Horse Mesa was filmed on breathtaking locations in Colorado and featured a herd of beautiful wild horses. Holt plays Chayne Weymer, who is obsessed with capturing Panguitch, king of the wild stallions. He is opposed to the local ranchers' use of barbed wire, and an epic fight ensues. Wild Horse Mesa is best known today for featuring a brief performance by Gary Cooper, who also appeared, again very briefly, in Paramount's following Grey Western, The Enchanted Hill (1926). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Holt, Noah Beery, Sr., (more)
- 1925
Cowboy ace Tom Mix allowed himself a change of pace with this costume adventure produced by Fox. Mix plays the legendary British highwayman, who after robbing nasty Lord Churlton (Philo McCullough) learns that the nobleman is to be married to innocent Lady Alice Brookfield (Kathleen Myers), a gun-shot wedding, so to speak, as the lady considers Churlton loathsome. With the assistance of Lady Alice's maid Sally (Lucille Hutton), our gallant hero concocts a plan to smuggle the fair maiden to York dressed as a boy. The scheme backfires, though, and Dick Turpin is chased all over creation by the authorities. He arrives in York just in time to save the fair maiden from a fate worse than death and together they find a safe haven in France. A very young Carole Lombard saw most of her footage left on the cutting-room floor but the future star can still be spotted in a crowd scene. And according to at least one report, fellow Fox cowboy Buck Jones joined the ranks of extras in a successful effort to surprise Mix. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Mix, Kathleen Myers, (more)
- 1925
Either you loved Tom Mix or you disapproved of his turning westerns into three-ring circuses. The Lucky Horseshoe presented Mix at his very best/worst in a story that was more Douglas Fairbanks than William S. Hart. Spurned by his employer's daughter, Elvira (Billie Dove, foreman Rand Foster turns the ranch into a tourist attraction. The girl returns with her fiancee, Denton (Malcolm Waite), an allegedly distinguished European whom she plans to wed on the property. Foster attempts to seduce the girl very much a la his hero Don Juan, and Denton orders his servant to kidnap the lovesick foreman until the upcoming nuptials. In captivity, Foster dreams he is Don Juan at the court of Barcelona, awakening to the realization that there is no time to waste. Escaping his captors, the foreman races to the altar, unmasks Denton as an imposter, and takes the bride for himself. Fox spent a fortune making sure this Mix vehicle became a winner, including having the dream sequences filmed in two-strip Technicolor and engaging Ziegfeld Follies star Ann Pennington as one of "Don Juan's" conquests. Leading lady Billie Dove enjoyed a reputation as one of America's most beautiful women at the time. As an actress, however, she was, according to former co-star Lon Chaney, "one of those 'blah' sorts." A young Gary Cooper, still using his real name, Frank Cooper, had a bit part as one of the ranch hands in this film. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Mix, Billie Dove, (more)
The Paramount team of Richard Dix and Lois Wilson starred in this top-notch silent western in which a Native American is the protagonist. The early silent era devoted many films to the depiction of American Indians, but that trend had not carried over into the screen's third decade, where Indians almost always played villains or were merely background dressing. Based on a Zane Grey novel and filmed partially in Monument Valley, The Vanishing American presented Dix, in what might very well have been his best performance until Cimarron (1930), as a college-educated Native American who only meets with racial intolerance when he returns to a reservation now lorded over by a villainous Bureau of Indian Affairs agent (Noah Beery). Today considered "quaintly" racist despite its good intentions, The Vanishing American must be viewed and compared to other films of the era. It certainly benefits from sincere portrayals of Dix and Wilson, the latter playing a dedicated schoolmarm desired by Dix and lusted after by Beery. According to one modern critic, Jon Tuska, the film was not a political tour-de-force, "but rather a kindly, occasionally sentimental portrayal of the red man as he adjusts to the white man's civilization." ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, (more)
- 1925
This silent Western, starring Dutch-born trick rider Marilyn Mills, is remembered solely for an unbilled appearance by a very young Gary Cooper. Cooper, still working under his real Christian name of Frank, was apparently a discovery of Mills and her husband, Gower Gulch producer-distributor J. Charles Davis. Mills, who also wrote this film under her real name of Mary C. Bruning, played Angelica "Trix" Warden, a willful college graduate turned rancher who foils the plans of a gang of cattle rustlers. J. Frank Glendon played Jack Norton, the new foreman, and William Lowery portrayed Buck Barlow, the leader of the rustlers. The real stars of the film, however, were Mills' two horses, Beverly and Star. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Based on a Pushkin novel, The Eagle stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favorite of the formidable Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser). He spurns her attentions, preferring not to be a kept consort. When his lands are stolen from him, Valentino transforms into a Robin-Hood-like masked avenger. Vilma Banky plays the daughter of the man who killed Valentino's own father. Despite his thirst for revenge, our hero falls in love with Vilma, who goes the "Lois Lane" route of adoring the masked-avenger Valentino but disdaining the unmasked Rudy, little guessing that the two are one in the same. Watch quickly for Gary Cooper as one of Valentino's masked minions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, (more)
- 1925
Zane Grey's 1925 story of the great Buffalo hunts became a sprawling silent Western produced by Paramount and starring the studio's stalwart Jack Holt as a trader who uncovers a scheme to blame the Indians for a Buffalo massacre. The film's highlight, a breathtaking shot of wagons careening across a frozen lake, was used again in the studio's equally fine 1933 remake. To match the old footage, director Henry Hathaway employed some of the same actors and stunt performers. The original Thundering Herd has gained the reputation, along with the same year's Wild Horse Mesa (also starring Holt), as the finest Grey adaptation ever produced. Both Tim McCoy and Gary Cooper earned bit parts in this epic Western filmed on locations at Lone Pine, California. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Holt, Lois Wilson, (more)
- 1926
Although some elements of this drama smack of the tired ploys of Drury Lane melodramas -- the demand for either the payment of a debt or the girl's hand, the girl riding her horse to victory -- a couple of unusual twists add some interest. Two Southern gentlemen, Colonel Girard (Josef Swickard) and Major Wingate (William H. Turner), have a falling out which separates their romantically inclined children, Betty Girard (Marlyn Mills) and Larry Wingate (Walter Emerson). Wingate's secretary (James McLaughlin) won't acknowledge the receipt of a payment on a note from Girard. When Girard comes over to demand an explanation, Wingate turns up dead. Girard is thrown in jail and the secretary tells Betty that either she must come up with the money or marry him. Betty's two horses uncover enough clues to place the responsibility for the murder on the secretary's shoulders. She then rides in the big race, wins the ten-thousand-dollar purse, and reunites with Larry. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1926
When his wife Claudia (Virginia Valli) files for divorce, writer James Langham (Pat O'Malley) is stuck with the cooking and the housework. What to do? Langham hires a surrogate wife, Gladys Moon (Helen Lee Worthing), to handle the domestic responsibilities -- with the understanding that there'll be no lovemaking on the premises. Claudia, however, suspects that James and Gladys are fooling around and decides against a reconciliation with James in favor of a marriage to fortune hunter Alphonse Marsac (Albert Conti). At this point, James is galvanized into action, kidnapping Gladys from a speeding train and declaring his undying devotion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Virginia Valli, Pat O'Malley, (more)
- 1926
Like most Westerns of the era, this Jack Holt vehicle from Paramount includes automobiles and even airplanes. But Holt went his rivals one better by incorporating a machine gun into a fight against a neighboring rancher who is out to ruin him. Based on a Peter B. Kyne novel, The Enchanted Hill also featured a triangle romance between Holt, rancher's daughter Mary Brian and jealous foreman Richard Arlen. The latter, a promising newcomer, basically took Holt's place in the Paramount hierarchy when the square-jawed star moved over to upstart Columbia. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Holt, Florence Vidor, (more)
- 1926
A very popular silent western, this film features two engineers vying for the affections of the adoptive daughter of a landowner. Barbara Worth (Vilma Banky) wants to help her father, Jefferson Worth (Charles Lane), build a dam on the Colorado River to help irrigate the desert land he owns. The elder Worth gets a loan from a New York banker, who brings with him his stepson, Willard Holmes (Ronald Colman), an engineer. Local engineer Abe Lee (Gary Cooper, in one of his first big roles) and Holmes both fall in love with Barbara. The banker cheats on materials for the dam as part of a shady deal. Jefferson Worth discovers the ruse and tries to finish the project himself, but he runs short of money to pay his hired hands. With the dam in jeopardy, the two rival engineers bury their differences and ride off on horses to get money to salvage the dam and save Worth, who is at the mercy of a lynch mob. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, (more)
- 1926
Long derided by film historians as a talented but visually unimaginative director, James Cruze made up for any and all past artistic sins with his rousing Old Ironsides. Per its title, this 11-reel silent film is set at the time of Stephen Decatur's defeat of the Barbary pirates in Tripoli. Decatur himself (played by comic actor Johnnie Walker) is a secondary character herein -- most of the screen time goes to the romantic leads, able-bodied seaman Charles Farrell and damsel-in-permanent-distress Esther Ralston. The acting honors go to those inveterate scene-stealers Wallace Beery and George Bancroft, cast respectively as Bos'n and Gunner. The film accommodates everything from outsized sea battles to a daring rescue from the clutches of the lustful pirates. A life-sized replica of "Old Ironsides" (aka the "Constitution") was built for the film; it remained a useful piece of bric-a-brac for many a subsequent Paramount seafaring epic. When originally released, the film utilized a wide-screen technique during many of the battle sequences. The videocassette version of Old Ironsides is, of course, unable to convey this, but it does have the bonus of a rousing musical score by Gaylord Carter. This print, incidentally, is crystal clear, enabling sharp-eyed viewers to spot Boris Karloff in a bit as a menacing Saracen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Esther Ralston, Charles Farrell, (more)
- 1927
After a lengthy apprenticeship in bits and secondary roles, Gary Cooper was promoted to stardom in the Zane Grey western Arizona Bound. Cooper plays a character known only as The Cowboy, who rides into a small frontier town on the same day that a big gold shipment is departing. It so happens that the shipment has been targeted for robbery by two separate villains: "Trusted" driver Buck O'Hara (Jack Dougherty), and a swarthy stranger (Christian J. Frank). Even so, it is The Cowboy who is accused of the robbery, and soon our poor hero finds himself the guest of honor at a "necktie party." He escapes the mob in time to expose the crooks, recover the gold, and win the heart of the heroine (Betty Jewel). Discovered by stunt-rider Marilyn Mills, young Gary Cooper had appeared in a pivotal role in Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Winning of Barbara Worth and Paramount saw him as their answer to MGM's Tim McCoy or Columbia's Jack Holt. Cooper's contract would be shared by Goldwyn and Paramount for years to come ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, Betty Jewel, (more)
Contrary to popular belief, Clara Bow was already Paramount's biggest box-office draw when she starred in this delightful rags-to-riches comedy. But It, from the fertile mind of bizarre best-selling author Elinor Glyn, remains perhaps the quintessential Bow picture. Not that the story of a poor shopgirl falling for her rich employer was anything new (by 1927, Bow could play that role in her sleep), but It came complete with one of the best publicity campaigns in Hollywood history. Glyn herself publicly pointed to Bow as the personification of It, "that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force." Paramount made sure that Glyn's lofty description of the word sunk in and even convinced the author to explain It in the film to leading man Antonio Moreno (who, according to Glyn, simply oozed It as well). The lightweight comedy behind all this hoopla centered on little Betty Lou Spence, a vivacious salesgirl invited to dinner at the Ritz by foppish wastrel and self-described "old fruit" "Monty" Montgomery (William Austin in one of those roles later personified by Edward Everett Horton). Betty is not paying attention to her dinner companion, however, but is ogling department store heir Cyrus Waltham (Moreno). He notices her too, and takes the salesgirl on a whirlwind tour of Coney Island. But when Betty is mistakenly assumed to be the unmarried mother of an infant (actually her roommate Molly's), stern Cyrus no longer sees her as proper marriage material. Betty, of course, gets her man in the end and Waltham's snooty girlfriend ("other woman" specialist Jacqueline Gadsden) ends up in the drink. Delivering all the vivacious punch expected of a Bow comedy, It takes time out for a couple of rather poignant scenes. With the hindsight that Brooklyn's own Bow was never fully accepted by Hollywood society despite her stardom, it is touching to watch Betty being ostracized at the snobbish Ritz; and Bow is never more affecting than when she realizes that Moreno is offering diamonds and pearls instead of marriage. Priscilla Bonner, as Bow's drab, single-mother roommate, adds a touch of realism to her brief role, enviously observing Betty's frivolity. If It only added to Bow's brilliant success, the film did little for the intelligent Bonner. To the end of her life, Bonner maintained that accepting featured billing in It lost her any chance of true stardom. A very young Gary Cooper, has a bit as a reporter and director Josef Von Sternberg reputedly took over for Clarence Badger during a brief illness. Despite its rather trite Cinderella plot, It magnificently demonstrates why Bow's guileless flapper came to define an entire decade. It is heartbreaking to realize that her decline had already set in, and Bow's very public troubles and eventual career destruction were lurking right around the corner! ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clara Bow, Antonio Moreno, (more)
- 1927
Kitty Flanders (Yvonne Pelletier), Jean Waddington and Ted Larrabee (Don Marion) are all "children of divorce" -- the two girls are left in a convent school by their mothers and Ted's upbringing is sketchy at best. When the three of them grow up, Ted (now played by Gary Cooper) falls deeply in love with Jean (the beautiful Esther Ralston). Kitty (Clara Bow) loves Vico, an impoverished prince (Einar Hansen), but she refuses to marry him because her mother, Katherine (Hedda Hopper), has drilled into her the necessity of marrying for money. So Kitty sets her sights on the wealthy Ted, even though Jean is her friend. After a night of drunken revelry, Ted wakes up to find he and Kitty are married. Even though he is desperately unhappy, Jean doesn't want their parents' mistake repeated and refuses to allow him to seek a divorce so that he can marry her. A few years later, things have gotten much worse for Kitty and Ted. Although they have a baby, it does nothing for the marriage and Ted does everything he can to avoid his unwanted wife. Then Kitty finds out that, for religious reasons, Vico can never marry a divorced woman. Since she can see no other way out, she poisons herself so that Ted and Jean can be together. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clara Bow, Esther Ralston, (more)
- 1927
No relation to the earlier John Ford western of the same name, The Last Outlaw was a vehicle for Paramount's up-and-coming action star Gary Cooper. The actor is cast as frontiersman Buddy Hale, who endeavors to prove that young Ward Lane (Jack Luden) is innocent of murder. He does this primarily because he's fallen in love with Ward's pretty sister Janet (Betty Jewel). But when Hale is appointed sheriff, he is obliged to track down Ward and arrest the boy, convincing Janet that Hale has betrayed her brother. It turns out that Ward was actually guilty, and that he's also the head of a vicious outlaw gang. Ultimately, Ward expires in a hail of bullets, and Hale and Janet are reunited. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, Jack Luden, (more)
- 1927
Young Paramount stars Gary Cooper and Thelma Todd, the latter a recent graduate of the studio's acting school, starred in this otherwise average Zane Grey Western directed by studio hack John Waters. It was Waters who, having spotted young Cooper in a screen test, recommended the lanky newcomer for Arizona Bound (1927). That film was successful enough for Paramount to conjure up Nevada, in which a once notorious gunfighter takes a respectable job on a ranch. Cooper's "Nevada" is charged with protecting the ranch owner's pretty daughter (Todd), arousing the enmity of ranch foreman William Powell, who is in love with the girl. The villainous foreman leaks a rumor of his rival's dark past to the sheriff, and the former outlaw is soon on the run again. But along the way, he catches a gang of cattle rustlers led by -- surprise -- William Powell. Thus rehabilitated, Nevada is free to marry lovely Thelma. Despite the strong cast -- in retrospect, at least -- Nevada was considered a rather weak entry in Paramount's long Zane Grey series and actually did little to further Cooper's career prospects. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, William Powell, (more)
- 1927
Wings, the first feature film to win an Academy Award, tends to disappoint a little when seen today. Too much time is afforded the wheezy old plotline about two World War I aviators (Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen) in love with the same woman (Jobyna Ralston), while the comedy relief of El Brendel is decidedly not to everyone's taste. But during the aerial "dogfight" sequences, the film is something else again: a grand-scale spectacular, the likes of which has never been duplicated, not even by more expensive efforts like Hell's Angels (1930) and The Blue Max (1965). Twenty-eight-year-old director William Wellman, himself a wartime aviator, was fortunate enough to have the full cooperation of the US War department at his disposal (even though his legendary temper nearly lost him that cooperation on more than one occasion!) Brilliantly handled though the aerial scenes may be, they are matched by the Earthbound combat sequences, including the now-famous shot of a long trench caving in on hundreds of unfortunate doughboys. The storyline is as follows: Jack Powell (Rogers) and David Armstrong ($owell) hate each other during basic training, grow to like each other, and fall out again while competing for the affections of Sylvia Lewis (Ralston). Mary Preston (Clara Bow) sacrifices her own nursing career to save a drunken Powell from disgrace, Powell goes on a rampage when he believes his pal Armstrong has been killed, inadvertently shoots down Armstrong while decimating the German air corps, and is finally reunited with the nurse. Wrapped up in nurse's garb throughout most of the film, the ebullient Clara Bow is permitted a sequence in which, disguised as a Parisian floozie while trying to rescue a revelling Rogers, she displays a great deal of epidermis. One of the film's chief claims to fame is its "introduction" of Gary Cooper (who'd actually been in films since the early 1920s), in a brief but crucial role as veteran flyer with a cheerily fatalistic attitude. When originally released, Wings included a sequence lensed in the wide-screen "Magnascope" process; even when seen "flat", however, the film contains some of the best flying sequences ever captured on celluloid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, (more)
- 1928
The fertile creative mind of director Gregory LaCava is well in evidence throughout Half a Bride. Esther Ralston stars as Patience Winslow, an impulsive heiress who marries a much-older man whom she really doesn't love. While honeymooning on her yacht without her new husband, Patience is marooned on a desert island with handsome Captain Edmunds (Gary Cooper). Her head full of notions that she's gleaned from radio dramas and pulp novels, Patience demands that she and Edmunds enter into an in-name-only marriage, observing the responsibilities and proprieties of matrimony without the sexual entanglements. So guess who's in love with whom by the time Patience and Edmunds are rescued? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1928
George Fitzmaurice directed this romantic World War I drama, which was First National Pictures' entry into the epic war/romance genre popular in the late 1920s (The Big Parade, Wings). Colleen Moore stars as the French gamin Jeannine Bertholot who is a good luck charm to a seven-man platoon of the British Air Force that uses the lilac fields of a small French village as their base. Jeannine is the niece of Madame Berthelot (Eugenie Besserer), who lodges and cares for the platoon. After a bumpy start, one of the flyers from the platoon, Philip Blythe (Gary Cooper) falls in love with her. Philip is reluctant to tell Jeannine that he loves her, but one morning before a dangerous mission, he declares his love. During the mission, Philip is shot down, and Jeannine frantically arranges for an ambulance crew to remove Philip's body from the wreckage. But during the rescue operations, Jeannine loses sight of Philip. To find him again, she begins an exhausting search of all the military hospitals, hoping to see Philip for one last time. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Colleen Moore, Gary Cooper, (more)
- 1928
Director William Wellman's follow-up to Wings was based in part on his own WWI experiences with the Lafayette Flying Corps. Four young men from various walks of life sign up for the French escadrille known as "The Legion of the Condemned." In essence, all four are running away -- from the law, from love, from themselves. Whenever a suicide mission comes up, the four men draw cards to see who will fly off to near-certain doom. With his best friend Byron Dashwood (Barry Norton) already haven died in combat, Gale Price (Gary Cooper) waxes fatalistic when he draws the high card next time around. As he prepares to drop a spy behind enemy lines, Gale flashes back to the events leading up to this moment -- specifically, to his ill-fated romance with Christine Charteris (Fay Wray), whom he has been led to believe is a German spy. Returning to the present, Gale discovers that his passenger is Christine, who is actually an operative in the French secret service. Before explanations can be exchanged, Gale is obliged to fly Christine to her rendezvous point. She is arrested as a spy and sentenced to be executed but is saved when the firing squad is decimated by a bombing raid, paving the way for a tender reunion with Gale. The screenplay for Legion of the Condemned was written by Wellman and his Wings collaborator John Monk Saunders. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fay Wray, Gary Cooper, (more)
- 1928
This silent romantic adventure is set in the Sahara desert, and purports to be a sequel to the successful Beau Geste. Like the first, it is based on a story by Christopher Wren and features members from the original cast. The story begins as three Legionnaires do not return promptly from furlough and end up in the poky. There, the hero duels with a traitor and wins, causing him to gain the designation "Beau Sabreur." Later he is sent into the desert to learn the ways of the Arabs and to help forge a peace treaty. There he encounters a lovely American journalist. Meanwhile the defeated traitor tries to stop the treaty from going through. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, Evelyn Brent, (more)
- 1928
Shopworn Angel was the first of three film versions of the Dana Burnet short story Private Pettigrew's Girl. Nancy Carroll stars as footloose cabaret entertainer Daisy Heath, who is totally oblivious to world affairs until she sees a parade of soldiers marching off to WWI. Later on, she inaugurates a casual romance with Texas-born private William Tyler (Gary Cooper). Daisy treats their brief affair as "just one of those things," but Tyler falls deeply in love with her. Panicking when Daisy begins keeping time with Broadway roue Bailey (Paul Lukas), Tyler goes AWOL on the eve of his embarkation to France. He seeks out and finds Daisy, whereupon the two spend a romantic day and night together. At last realizing that she is genuinely in love with Tyler, Daisy agrees to marry him but faints just before the preacher is able to complete the ceremony. Borne off by the MPs, Tyler is bundled onto his transport ship and sent off to the battlefields of France. Her outlook on life profoundly changed by this experience, Daisy forsakes her carefree ways, promising to wait faithfully for Tyler's return. Shopworn Angel was remade in 1938 with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, then again in 1959 as the Sophia Loren vehicle That Kind of Woman. A silent film, the 1929 Shopworn Angel was released with a handful of musical sequences, including Nancy Carroll's solo rendition of A Precious Little Thing Called Love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nancy Carroll, Gary Cooper, (more)
- 1928
"Doomsday" is the name of a valuable patch of British farm property owned by self-made millionaire Percival Fream (Lawrence Grant). Impoverished aristocrat Mary Viner (Florence Vidor) lives in a cottage on Fream's property, with her aged and infirm father Captain Viner (Charles A. Stevenson). Another tenant of Doomsday is young farmer Arnold Furze (Gary Cooper), who tills the land with pride, even though he doesn't own it. Fream hopes to make Mary his wife as proof that he's "arrived" in society, but she falls in love with Furze. Even so, Mary can't resist the creature comforts offered her by Fream, so she marries him instead of the man she truly loves. Eventually, Mary realizes that her marriage is a mistake, and after the death of her father she asks for an annulment. Knowing full well that Fream will cut her off without a cent, Mary shows up at Furze's doorstep, humbly offering her services as his housekeeper. Though still feeling betrayed by Mary, Furze accepts her offer, and soon this "business arrangement" rekindles their love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Florence Vidor, Gary Cooper, (more)
