Gary Cooper

“David Thomson is, without doubt, the greatest living film historian.” —Allen Barra, Los Angeles Times

"What Thomson does not know or feel about films is not worth knowing or feeling."—Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian (UK)

“The stars shine bright in this series of brief biographies of four of classic Hollywood's most enduring icons. Eminent film critic Thomson (The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, 2009, etc.) brings a historian's acumen and poet's sensibility to his portraits of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper.  The author seeks to identify the mythic essence of each of the star's cinematic personae, and the ways in which key films and carefully managed public perceptions shaped those ideas . . . Cooper is presented as a hapless, weakwilled adulterer whose lean body, rugged handsomeness and preternatural stillness translated on camera as a quintessentially American rectitude and heroic stoicism. In clean, allusive prose, Thomson assesses the filmographies of these titans, offering surprising judgments and insights—he despises Cooper's beloved Sergeant York (1941) and the Davis classic The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)—and defining the magic of a vanished kind of stardom, an orchestrated mystique that made these men and women dream figures for a mass audience. The books are full of fascinating tidbits of gossip regarding his subjects' sexual peccadilloes, financial maneuverings and studio politicking, and Thomson is wickedly funny and startlingly poetic in his observations . . . Indispensable additions to any American film library.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The author of the standard reference The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (4th ed., 2004) begins the Guest Star series with fact-packed critical briefs on four American movie icons, managing to give each slim volume its own distinctive tone . . . Thomson on Gary Cooper wittily reflects on an actor who seems to have been born into the public’s consciousness full-grown. As he describes Cooper’s meteoric rise from bit player in westerns to a big-name performer, the British critic repeatedly puzzles over the mysteries and contradictions in Cooper’s character, most notably the fact that that this international symbol of a certain kind of stoical, taciturn, adult American manhood was in his private life unambitious, passive, intellectually shallow—a man of neither thought nor action, but an unconscious practitioner of a kind of Zen-like nonaction. Even his entry into the film business and subsequent career seem more a series of happy accidents than any kind of planned progression. Likewise, his prodigious sex life—he seems to have bedded every available woman he ever met—seems more an instinctive tropism, akin to how sea anemones reach out for anything passing by that looks like food, than the result of willful erotic engagement. Thomson also devotes considerable time to highly readable deconstructions of Cooper’s best and most popular films, notably Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Sergeant York, and High Noon, with side trips taken through his other films, noteworthy and not.”—Jack Helbig, Booklist (starred review)

“In the initial volumes of this new series, noted film critic/historian Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) brings his opinions to bear on the lives and careers of four stars of the golden age of American cinema, all of whom remained active until their deaths. With classic films such as Jezebel, Dark Victory, and Now, Voyager, Bette Davis was the premiere leading lady at Warner Brothers for some 17 years. Gary Cooper (High Noon) became a star with the introduction of talking pictures and remained one, albeit somewhat diminished, to the end of his life. After being frequently cast as the snarling petty crook, Humphrey Bogart played a series of distinguished roles, climaxing with his Oscar-winning triumph in The African Queen. Ingrid Bergman's roles in Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Gaslight seemed to presage a lengthy stardom, but the scandal concerning her affair with director Roberto Rossellini stalled her in the late 1940s. Thomson presents little more than a brief overview of each star's career but discusses what he considers their best films in somewhat more detail. His look at the actors' personal lives includes his quirky suppositions about their sex lives, and he often writes as if speaking, sometimes quite disconcertingly, directly to the reader . . . These books seem intended primarily for film buffs with limited knowledge of these particular stars as well as curious general readers.”—Roy Liebman, formerly with California State Univ., Los Angeles, Library Journal