After a few months of stewing over this man's mannerisms, I've realized what it is that makes him so dreamy;
He has this boy-like charm; he stands for something pure, honest, just, moral and true. He isn't bombarded full of the worldly ideas; what he has to say means something. The reason people may not think he speaks a lot is because he observes first and THEN speaks; and oh boy, when this man speaks he doesn't just say something that will make you think, but it turns your whole world upside down and shakes your beliefs.
The man is incredible and it shows in his acting BECAUSE that's who he is in real life; it's not fakey, it's not put on...these characters are Gary Cooper.
In his childhood his father and mother instilled in him something firm and strong that isn't easily shaken by influences or peer-pressure; the man stuck true to what he believed in. That's why I believe, as his biography said, that his time had come and he couldn't really progress through the years because the world was changing dramatically. Coop had lived through the times and now that the world was getting more dark (not that it wasn't dark before) he would look more and more like a "weirdo" because of what he truly stood for; and back then (in the 60's and 70's) it wasn't popular to stand for something and tell people "hey, that ain't right!" You'd be given the look of "hey man, you layin' off the drugs today or somethin'?"
Anyways, I still love this movie and always will because it shows that the common good (which is anything but common anymore) wins out, even though it may not look like it through the climax, the ending is emotional and it makes you realize that this man does have something special; something very uncommon...something...that only Cooper can "cooperize"
"He was a student of human nature. Natural and unassuming, he could spot a phony across a country mile. It was said of Gary Cooper that ten minutes after meeting the man, you felt he'd been your friend for years. And once he was your friend, he was your friend for life."
-- John Mulholland
He was tall, lean, handsome, soft-spoken, courteous, the American male. No other actor in the history of film so personified the ideal of the American male as Gary Cooper. For 35 years and 92 films, Gary Cooper was America's Everyman.
-- John Mulholland
"Gary Cooper was the symbol of trust, confidence and protection. He is dead now. What a miracle that he existed."
-- Upon his death in 1961, the German newspaper Die Welt said it best.
"Perhaps with him there is ended a certain America: that of the frontier and of innocence which had or was believed to have an exact sense of the dividing line between good and evil."
-- Rome newspaper Corriere Della Sera
"He was a poet of the real. He knew all about cows, bulls, cars, and ocean tides. He had the enthusiasm of a boy. He could always tell you his first vivid impression of a thing. He had an old-fashioned politeness, but he said nothing casually."
-- Poet Clifford Odetts
Whomever he played -- soldier, cowboy, adventurer, lounge lizard, lover -- Gary Cooper became that character. The artistry was seamless, so natural that it was impossible to tell where the man left off and the actor began. As Charles Laughton put it: "We act, he is." John Barrymore put it another way: "This fellow is the world's greatest actor. He does without effort what the rest of us spend our lives trying to learn - namely to be natural."
-- John Mulholland
"His death left a void no other actor can fill."
-- John Mulholland
Gary Cooper...he was catnip to the ladies.
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