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Banner for Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen, a documentary directed by John Mulholland, 2013. |
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Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940. |
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Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway. |
Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway were two men who achieved massive
success in their professions. Even today, nearly sixty years after their
deaths, they are legendary figures in American culture. The 2013 documentary, Cooper
and Hemingway: The True Gen, written and directed by John Mulholland,
examines their twenty-year friendship.
Mulholland makes clear the parallels between the two men’s
lives, and they are fascinating. Cooper and Hemingway died just six weeks apart
in 1961, and both men have become examples of rugged, outdoorsy American men.
The film does a nice job of showing how Cooper and Hemingway were different
from their media personas, and how they astutely kept their media images
intact. Cooper once said that he had only read half a dozen books, thus preserving
his image as a simple “yup” and “nope” fella. The truth was, he had studied art
at Grinnell College, and was a very intelligent person, with deep knowledge
about surprising subjects. And of course, there was more to Hemingway than the
blustering macho man who went on bullfights and safaris and hunted for Nazi
submarines off the coast of Cuba.
When Cooper and Hemingway met in 1940, they were both at
career peaks. Hemingway was about to publish For Whom the Bell Tolls, a
resounding success. (It’s not my favorite Hemingway book—I agree with F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s take on it: “It is a thoroughly superficial book which has all the
profundity of Rebecca.” The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.335)
Cooper was about to make Sergeant York, the film that would win him his
first Oscar. Cooper and Hemingway hit it off immediately. Hemingway had based
Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls, partially on Cooper’s
screen persona. Cooper ended up playing Robert Jordan in the 1943 movie of For
Whom the Bell Tolls. Cooper had earlier played Frederic Henry in the 1932
film of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, but the two men did not meet
then. Hemingway disliked the movie, but admired Cooper’s performance.
The film follows Cooper and Hemingway over the next twenty
years. We see how both men were besotted with much younger women in the late
1940’s and early 1950’s. Cooper had a long affair with 23-year-old Patricia
Neal, his co-star in 1949’s The Fountainhead, which eventually led to a
separation from his wife Veronica, known to all by her nickname, “Rocky.” Hemingway
was trying to have an affair with 19-year-old Adriana Ivancich, who became the
inspiration for the character of Renata in Across the River and into the
Trees. (The film notes that when Adriana met Gary Cooper, she was quite
besotted with him, which no doubt infuriated Hemingway.)
However, both men came roaring back in 1952, as Cooper starred
in what is probably his best-known role, as Sherriff Will Kane in High Noon,
and Hemingway won praise and acclaim for his novella The Old Man and the
Sea. But as the 1950’s went on, Hemingway found it harder and harder to
finish any of his writing. Although he lived for nine more years, The Old
Man and the Sea would be the last book Hemingway published during his
lifetime. Both men were struggling as the 1960’s dawned: Cooper with the cancer
that would take his life, and Hemingway with drinking, depression, writer’s
block, and numerous physical ailments. Cooper died on May 13, 1961, just a week
after his 60th birthday. Hemingway, who felt that he could not write
any more, took his own life on July 2, 1961. And so, both men passed into the
realm of legends.
Several people note the fact that Cooper was one of the few
people who could kid Hemingway. I wonder if part of the reason for this was
because Hemingway wasn’t competing with Cooper. Hemingway had poor
relationships with other authors, as he saw everything as a competition.
Just read the 1950 New Yorker piece that Lillian Ross
wrote about Hemingway, where he compares himself to other authors, using boxing
as a metaphor: “I started out very quiet, and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I
trained hard, and I beat Mr. deMaupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendahl,
and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any
ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”
Cooper and Hemingway made me recall just how much I
like Gary Cooper, and how effortlessly cool he was. Cooper was a strikingly
handsome man, one of the few actors who could look at ease in both a tuxedo and
Western clothes. On the screen, Cooper had an easy charisma that drew the
viewer in. No matter what he was doing on screen, you couldn’t take your eyes
off of Gary Cooper. Everything Cooper did onscreen looked effortless, which led
some to conclude that he wasn’t really acting at all. One of my favorite
stories about Cooper comes from the making of Vera Cruz, his 1954 western with Burt Lancaster. Lancaster was an intense performer, and when
filming started he felt he had to compensate for Cooper’s low-key energy. But
when Lancaster saw the rushes from the first few days of shooting, he realized
exactly what Cooper was doing: “There I was, acting my ass off. I looked like
an idiot, and Coop was absolutely marvelous.”
Cooper and Hemingway is filled with interviews from
people who knew both men very well, and it’s quite a star-studded cast,
including many people who are longer with us: George Plimpton, Patricia Neal,
Charlton Heston, Budd Schulberg, Robert Stack, and Elmore Leonard. There’s also
a great scene at the end with a centenarian who is still with us: Kirk Douglas,
who reads the letter he wrote Cooper just before Cooper’s death. Douglas, who
was then filming Lonely Are the Brave, which became one of his signature
performances, wrote to Cooper that the director’s only advice to him was: “Play
it like Gary Cooper would.”
Also interviewed is Maria Cooper Janis, the only child of
Gary Cooper. She has great stories about her father, and she does an excellent
job of keeping his legacy alive by sharing stories through the official Gary
Cooper Instagram account. (Her husband Byron Janis composed the score for Cooper
and Hemingway.)
With a running time in excess of two hours, Cooper and
Hemingway is probably too long, but the stories it tells are fascinating. (Confession:
I did not watch the film in one sitting.) It’s narrated by Sam Waterston and
features the always excellent Len Cariou as the voice of Hemingway. (Fun fact:
Len Cariou originated the role of Sweeney Todd on Broadway. He’s also a
crossword puzzle favorite, thanks to his short, unusual first name.)
If you’re a fan of either Gary Cooper or Ernest Hemingway,
you’ll find much to enjoy in Cooper and Hemingway.
1 comment:
Thanks for the great post. I'm a great Hemingway fan, not much of a Cooper fan, at least after High Noon. Its interesting that "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - the movie - was a massive hit both with the critic/public in 1943, and Martha Gellhorn thought it was done very well. Today, its hard to watch, it seems so fake. Bergman and Cooper are fine, but the supporting cast are awful and don't seem the least bit Spanish. And I loved the novel, so sorry Scott.
Some other great non-writer Hemingway friendships were Col Lanham and Stanley franklin the bullfighter. I agree that "Papa" had to be the NO. 1 writer at the table or he was an S.O.B. Dos Passos, amazingly, put up with it, and its Hemingway that ended the friendship.
Just rambling - but Cooper was part of the booze and cigarettes generation, and that's what killed him. Along, with Bogart, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, John Garfield, Clark Gable, and Spencer Tracy.
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