Gary Cooper Movies

Want to know the best Gary Cooper movies?  How about the worst Gary Cooper movies?  Curious about Gary Cooper box office grosses or which Gary Cooper movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Gary Cooper movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Gary Cooper (1901–1961) was an American film actor who appeared in over 100 movies from 1923-1961. Unfortunately many of Cooper’s silent movies have been lost forever. So this page will only look at his movie career from his first “talkie” The Virginian (1929), to his last movie, The Naked Edge (1961) which was released a month after his death in 1961.  Just a few quick notes on Gary Cooper’s silent movie career. From 1923 to 1929, Cooper appeared in over 40 movies. Most of his roles, were either bit or uncredited parts. He did however appear in some very popular movies during this time period. He played a Roman guard in the original version of Ben-Hur (1925), he had one scene in the first movie to ever win the Oscar® for Best Picture….Wings (1927), and he was in the 1927 box office hit Children of Divorce.

In 1929, he became a major star with his first sound picture, The Virginian. He followed The Virginian with the blockbuster hit Morocco (1931), co-starring Marlene Dietrich in her first American film. Over the next thirty years, Cooper would appear in over 60 movies, earning 5 Oscar® nominations, two Oscar® wins (1941’s Sergeant York and 1952’s High Noon) and numerous blockbuster hits. Two of his movies, Sergeant York and 1943’s For Whom The Bell Tolls are still ranked in the Top 100 box office hits of all-time when you look at adjusted domestic box office numbers.

His IMDb page shows 118 acting credits from 1923-1961. This page will rank Gary Cooper movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and many of his silent movies were not included in the page.

Gary Cooper in 1952's High Noon.
Gary Cooper in 1952’s High Noon.

Gary Cooper Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Gary Cooper Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Gary Cooper movies by his co-stats
  • Sort Gary Cooper movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost.
  • Sort Gary Cooper movies by co-stars of yearly box office rank or trivia if rank not available
  • Sort Gary Cooper movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Gary Cooper movie received.
  • Sort Gary Cooper movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
 
Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds in 1936's Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds in 1936’s Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

Possibly Interesting Facts About Gary Cooper

#1 After failing as an editorial cartoonist and a salesman of electronic signs in his early 20s, Gary Cooper moved from Montana to Los Angeles with his parents. His thinking on the move…”would rather starve where it was warm, than to starve and freeze too.”

#2 The American Film Institute named Gary Cooper as the 11th best male actor of the Classic Hollywood cinema period.

#3 Gary Cooper married Veronica “Rocky” Balfe in 1933. Despite being separated from between 1951 and 1954, she was with Cooper when he passed away in 1961. They had one daughter together, Maria Cooper. Here you go mom….personal information about him.

#4 Gary Cooper made four movies with legendary director Cecil B. DeMille. Those movies were The Plainsman(1936), North West Mounted Police (1940), The Story of Doctor Wassell (1944) and Unconquered (1947).

#5 During the filming of The Plainsman, Cecil B. DeMille wanted to fire a very young Mexican actor who was playing an indian. Gary Cooper talked DeMille out of firing the actor. The actor? Anthony Quinn who would go on to win two Oscars®.

#6 Cooper was the first choice for the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. When Cooper turned down the role, he was passionately against it. He is quoted as saying, “Gone With The Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his nose, not me”

#7 Alfred Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper to star in 1940’s Foreign Correspondent and 1942’s Sabotuer. Cooper later admitted he had made a “mistake” in turning down the director.

#8 Gary Cooper’s reputation as the “strong silent type” goes back to one of his first talking pictures, The Virginian, in which his character had little to say but definitely commanded the respect of those around him. The strong silent type/Gary Cooper was mentioned numerous times in the great HBO series The Sopranos.

#9 Cooper was given a Honorary Oscar® in April 1961, his close friend James Stewart, accepted the award on his behalf. Stewart’s emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the next day newspapers ran the headline, “Gary Cooper has cancer.” One month later, on May 13, 1961, six days after his 60th birthday, Cooper died.

#10 Check out Gary Cooper‘s career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

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154 thoughts on “Gary Cooper Movies”

  1. Gary Cooper and those film stars of the Golden Era, Clark Gable, Errrol Flynn, Joan Crawford, Linda Darnell, Betty Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Tyrone Power, James Stewart, Gene Tierney, Humphrey Bogart, Yvonne De Carlo, and all the rest were unique and we will never see their like again.
    They have become national treasures and continue to provide us with eternal pleasure and wonderful dreams.

    Reply

  3. Roberta Haynes who co-starred opposite Gary Cooper in Return To Paradise has died. She was 89. R.I.P.

    Reply

  4. 1 HI STEVE From time to time the argument rages about who was the greatest western star of the cowboy classic era at the cinema with one person claiming it was The Duke, another going for Randy Scott, Bob Taylor coveting some obscure award called Cowboy of the Century, my Jimmy Stewart actually getting that award, for what it was worth, and Flora going nuts because Glenn Ford wasn’t given it! The publicists for Coop’s 1959 Man of the West had no doubts on the subject however as I clearly remember that in the trailer for the film the punchline was, as Gary appeared on the screen, “WEST! – here is your Greatest Man.”

    2 You may recall the intense debates between John and me about Cooper, John being a Coop fan per se whereas I personally couldn’t stand the younger cooper whom I found stilted and pretentious but I loved the more elderly Gary from his Captain Quincy Wyatt in Distant Drums onward. Drawings from that film were actually serialised in a comic strip publication here in 1951/52.

    3 Anyway Gary’s career was so prolific and varied that I relished the opportunity to see a range of the posters from it and have not been disappointed, again to the level of 98%. There are again so many great posters that it is beyond my own skills to be completely definitive about the very best but here is another randomly selected “lucky 13” that are definitely AMONG the very best – Marco Polo. Good Sam, the raunchy one from Bluebeard, Dallas, Chuck and Coop squaring off in Wreck of Mary Deare, Along Came Jones, The Fountainhead, Unconquered, The Hanging Tree [“Only a bullet could get close enough to Doc Frail!”] Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Distant Drums and The Naked Edge [Coop’s last movie and produced by Mr Mumbles Senior via a company set up for him by his inarticulate son]. I had to draw down the shutters there as I could have gone on indefinitely. I don’t favour being negative [except where Joel is involved] but one poster I didn’t like was the 1st one for They Came to Cordura which I though was too light-hearted to reflect the seriousness of the main theme.

    4 Exciting stills – the lobby cards for Cowboy and the Lady and Design for Living, the photos of Gary with beauties Arthur, Bergman, Grace Kelly and Dietrich in Morocco. [In the the 1936 Desire Marlene was 1st billed over Coop whereas in the 1930 Morocco she had to take 2nd billing to Gary.] Par excellence though is the iconic duo of Coop and Burt in Vera Cruz. The posters tagline at the time of release said of the pairing “The battle of the giants is on in the greatest spectacle of the all!”

    5 You and The All Seeing One have the exact same Top 5 as best reviewed in only a slightly different order – truly “all great minds think alike!

    Reply

    1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, rating, info, trivia and comment, much appreciated.

      Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.

      Less stills more posters this time and there was a lot of them, I had to leave some out. I kept in the posters that didn’t get an ‘airing’ before and the ‘surplus’ artwork can be found in other videos.

      I remember reading Charlton Heston’s diary book and the sadness he felt when Coop died in 1961, aged 60. He must have been highly respected and loved by the Hollywood community.

      Coop would be the first to admit he wasn’t a brilliant actor but in the films he appeared in he was very effective. And so many of them have become great classics.

      High Noon is revered amongst western fans and is up there in the top 10 or even top 5 great westerns of all time. But John Wayne wasn’t a fan of the film – “I made Rio Bravo because I didn’t like High Noon… I didn’t think a good town marshal was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His Quaker wife. That isn’t my idea of a good Western.”

      8 Gary Cooper films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – Friendly Persuasion, Love in the Afternoon, Morocco, Lives of a Bengal lancer, Beau Geste, Pride of the Yankees, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and High Noon. 6 more scored 9 out of 10 including – Ball of Fire and Sergeant York.

      High Noon tops the charts at IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes and Bruce’s critics chart.

      One more big Top 50 tomorrow and I’ll be back with some new subjects on monday.

      Reply

      1. HI STEVE

        1 I’m glad of the supplementary information in your feedback to my Cooper post.

        2 The Duke also hated High Noon because he felt it showed small town America up as cowards. I think that great Wayne fan as I am I have to say that he took other people’s movies that he didn’t like too personally and this got him condemned in some quarters, particularly among those who disliked his politics, as an intolerant bully. Apparently though if you got on the right side of him – and he liked Democrat Kirk Douglas – he could be very gregarious. However generally he obviously didn’t believe in the “democratic” stance that “I disagree totally with what you say but would defend to the death your right to say it.”

        3 I’ve said before on Cogerson that I remember a situation once where the subject of Wayne’s criticism of Cooper came up and somebody wondered what the real-life Duke would have done had vicious outlaws come to town looking his scalp and a rather outspoken friend of mine shouted out “He’d hide!!

        4. All good things come to an end and I look forward to your last Big 50 for now. You realise though that you’ve raised the bar. Previously we all thought we were doing well if we got a Top 30 or even a Top 20 but in future people could be looking for massively expanded lists with possibly only Dan able to satisfy needs!

        Reply

      2. Hey Steve….I will have to check out today’s video when I get off work tonight….glad your Copper update got some attention…job well done.

        Reply

    2. Hey Bob…..good breakdown on Steve’s Gary Cooper update…..5 for 5….pretty amazing considering how many movies the Great Coop made. 🙂

      Reply

  5. JOHN – Coop Part 3

    1 Let’s leave the final word to Wikipedia because you as do I like quoting it . Mentioning that Coop’s peak years were probably 1936-1943 Wikipedia nevertheless goes on:

    His career spanned thirty-five years, from 1925 to 1960, and included leading roles in eighty-four feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood [1962].
    On top of his prominent box office success in High Noon, Vera Cruz and Friendly Persuasion among his other profitable 1950s films spanning the decade were Blowing Wild in 1953 thru Garden of Evil in 1954 until Love in the Afternoon in 1957.

    2 Saying of Wiki and every one of the other authorities mentioned in my PARTS 1 & 2 “They’re all wrong,” leaves one in danger of sounding like the woman who watching a parade go by turned to others and said: “See that! They’re all out of step but my wee Johnny.” It is perhaps an ironic coincidence that “Johnny” was the precise name used in the quotation that I saw! Anyway Viva La Gary!

    CORRECTION AND APOLOGY
    Part 2 should read
    “and he was twice nominated as No 1 male star for Golden Laurel Awards in 1958 and 1959 and lost but Laurel still declared him the No 6 & 7 greatest male star of 1958 and 1959 respectively.

    Reply

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