Where Paramount Put Westerns On The Talkie Map

The Virginian (1929) Looks/Sounds Like True West

This was widely famed when new in 1929, so much so that Paramount brought it back in 1934, then did a remake in 1946. Outdoors never sounded so good, opening titles scored by mooing cows. This is where Yup/Nope got hung on Gary Cooper for keeps. He'd live with, sometimes spoof, that image all the way to the end. It's so pervasive as to obscure the performance he gives as The Virginian, so halting, so naturalistic, as to seem almost like "bad" or inexperienced acting. But Cooper was experienced by this time, for that matter understood new rules of screen talk better than vets that played opposite him to their peril (John Barrymore said Cooper was the best bar none, including himself). I think Coop based his Virginian on genuine articles he'd met growing up in Montana. No talking cowboys had so far registered like this. Compare Cooper with Warner Baxter overreach as the Cisco Kid the previous year (Fox's In Old Arizona). Cooper's so raw here as to be without even mannerisms he'd develop as stardom was consolidated. Compare The Virginian with later The Plainsman, Along Came Jones, or Dallas, and see him apply tricks to a point of being mechanical. Problem for Coop was his knowing it had come to that, freshness of The Virginian not to be fully had again.

Not to say he'd ever be less than great. I looked at him recent in Garden Of Evil and ... monumental. In fact, monument was the word to describe this star by 1954. Cooper knew he was relying on repeated effects by then, and sat in on acting classes (with coach Jeff Corey) to improve. His efforts went right through the career. It wasn't insecurity, but a genuine humility. Did greats like Cooper fully realize that it was cumulative effect of all their roles that moved us so, redoubled each time we saw a new one? I'd grow up with his on syndicated TV, one week Vera Cruz, then The Hanging Tree, backward to Sergeant York or High Noon. Each built upon the last, as brick was laid by Cooper to his screen persona. I missed that initial impact, am sorry for it, can but imagine going to each of his when new, as well with Bogart, Gable, Flynn, Cagney, the rest, were unfurling at a same time. These were method actors in a far truer sense than would be the case after it became a self-conscious, if not destructive, cult.

Everything Cooper and peers experienced in turbulent lives was reflected by performances, not an affect, but genuine and to large extent unconscious. We saw what smoking and alcohol did to these faces. Almost all of them would die comparatively young. Whatever disturb went on in private lives translated right to the screen in expression if not interpretation of roles. Authenticity rather than affect. While Method-ers plowed childhood for emotional guideline, these had but to recall last night's assignation or unwelcome flap at Ciro's to create mood for a working day. Cooper and peers were pros, but they hauled rocks from personal life and habits, all shared, if unknowingly, with ones of us (especially now with benefit of candid bios) that knew what went on back of scenes. Cooper was especially colorful, if unwise in some of indulgences, but each were plasma to feed unimpeachable authority of his screen self. Anthony Perkins once recalled telling Cooper how great it was to work with such a living legend in Friendly Persuasion, to which Coop replied, "How about we leave off that legend s--t." Cooper knew that to analyze his gift was to jeopardize it, and hardly needed to be told he was a legend.