Gary Cooper Net Worth

Gary Cooper's Quotes

• Until I came along all the leading men were handsome, but luckily they wrote a lot of stories about the fellow next door.
• If you hit the mark with two out of every five movies you'll keep the wheels of the cycle turning.
• To get folks to like you, I figured you had to sort of be their ideal. I don't mean a handsome knight riding a white horse, but a fellow who answered the description of a right guy.
• People ask me how come you've been around so long. Well, it's through playing the part of Mr Average Joe American.
• [in 1931] I haven't read a half a dozen books in my life.

Interesting Facts about Gary Cooper

1. Hobbies: Fishing, hunting, riding, swimming, and taxidermy.
2. In the early 1930s his doctor told him he had been working too hard. Cooper went to Europe and stayed a lot longer than planned. When he returned, he was told there was now a "new" Gary Cooper--an unknown actor needed a better name for films, so the studio had reversed Gary Cooper's initials and created a name that sounded similar: Cary Grant.
3. Along with Mylène Demongeot, Cooper set in motion the first escalator to be installed in a cinema, at the Rex Theatre in Paris on June 7 1957.
4. Worked as a Yellowstone Park guide for several seasons before becoming an actor.
5. Father-in-law of pianist and composer Byron Janis.
6. Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1966.
7. Pictured on one of four 25¢ US commemorative postage stamps issued 23 March 1990 honoring classic films released in 1939. The stamp featured Cooper as the title character of Beau Geste (1939). The other films honored were Stagecoach (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Gone with the Wind (1939).
8. Upon seeing him, a professor in the theater department at Grinnell College recorded "shows no promise."
9. Father of Maria Cooper Janis.
10. Despite his wholesome screen image, he was an infamous (and privately boastful) womanizer in reality, allegedly having had affairs with numerous and sometimes very famous leading ladies throughout his career. This was in spite of the fact that he had a faithful wife, Sandra, and that many of his lovers were also married.
11. His Oscar-winning roles as Will Kane from High Noon (1952) and Sgt. Alvin York from Sergeant York (1941) were ranked #5 and #35 in the American Film Institute's Heroes list in their 100 years of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villains.
12. He was voted the 18th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
13. Is mentioned in the song "La Dernière Séance" by Eddy Mitchell. He is also mentioned in the song "Putting on the Ritz.".
14. He was voted the 42nd Greatest Movie Star of all time by Premiere Magazine.
15. He was fond of dogs. At various times he owned boxers, Dobermans and Great Danes. He and his wife also raised Sealyhams.
16. He liked sports and kept in shape with hiking and riding, tennis and golf, archery and skiing, trout fishing and spear fishing, swimming and scuba diving and driving fast cars. He liked boxing.
17. Appeared in 107 movies, 82 of which he starred in. Only 16 of those were filmed in color. And he starred in 14 silent movies.
18. Starred in a total of 20 westerns, three of which were silent.
19. His mother's favorite movie of his is The Pride of the Yankees (1942).
20. His appetite was prodigious, but no matter how much he ate, he always remained thin. During his early years in Hollywood, working odd jobs and living with his parents, he said, he said with some comic exaggeration, that his "starvation diet at the time ran to no less than a dozen eggs a day, a couple of loaves of bread, a platter of bacon, and just enough pork chops between meals to keep me going until I got home for supper." His specialty on hunting trips was gargantuan: wild duck covered with bacon strips, enhanced by four eggs and steak. He could eat a cherry pie and drink a quart of milk for lunch.