Tribute to Gary Cooper will screen the actor’s seminal films
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 17, 2001 9:00 p.m.
By Emi Kojima
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
He is the lone man who will do whatever it takes to do the right
thing, despite what everyone else says.
No one plays the role of classic American hero better than Gary
Cooper, the Hollywood movie star whose four-decade career spanned
through silent film and the 1950s. He made over 100 films during
his lifetime.
In the first centennial tribute of its kind, the UCLA Film and
Television Archive and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences is honoring Cooper in the film festival “Man of the
West,” which runs through May 24.
Nearly 2,000 people are expected to attend the festival. Jesse
Zigelstein, an Archive programmer, said that is a very high
turn-out for a film festival.
“Gary Cooper has a strong fan base. Anybody who came of
age during World War II will remember Gary Cooper as part of an
experience of American pop culture,” he said.
The Archive will screen “High Noon,” on Saturday, a
film which won Cooper an academy award for best actor. The film
epitomizes and subverts the Western genre, with Cooper as Will
Kane, a marshal who finds out on his wedding day that an outlaw he
arrested years earlier received a pardon and is heading back to
town.
Jonathan Kuntz, an assistant professor of film and television
said that the 1952 film is a good example of Cooper as the strong,
silent American hero, a characterization that has become his
trademark.
“His rugged good looks seemed only to improve with
age,” Kuntz said.
Zigelstein described Cooper as a seductive figure well known for
his almost feminine physical beauty.
Copper’s appeal as a handsome lead character draws people
to his films. Susanna Musotto, a UCLA staff member, said she
attended a Cooper screening both to satisfy her curiosity about the
festival and because Cooper is an attractive man.
Although Cooper is often known as a cowboy, he excelled in both
screwball comedies and dramatic epics. In “Mr. Deeds Goes to
Town,” (1936), he plays a quirky and awkward everyman figure
who manages to charm a materialistic town with his true
goodness.
Cooper’s impeccable comic timing is also showcased in
“Ball of Fire” (1942), in which he stars as a stoic
grammarian.
“Gary Cooper is Gary Cooper in every role,”
Zigelstein said. “But it’s not a static persona. He has
a core persona that he reinvented in every film. He had a basic
appeal of being a heroic everyman that Americans really wanted to
experience during the time.”
FILM: All films in the festival are shown in
the James Bridges Theater, in Melnitz Hall. Admission is $7
general, $5 students, seniors and UCLA Alumni Association members
with valid ID. Box office opens one hour before show time.
“High Noon” and “The Hanging Tree” show at
7:30 p.m. on May 19. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” shows at
2 p.m. on May 20. “Man of the West” and “Friendly
Persuasion” show at 7:30 p.m. on May 24. For additional
information call (310) 206-8013 or visit www.cinema.ucla.edu.
