Cooper actually says 'Yup' in this one.
Does any film buff know if he says this iconic taciturn word that defined his screen persona, in any previous film before this one?
shareI just watched it tonight. Don't mean to be a nit-picker, but since you point it out, I thought he pretty clearly said "yep" rather than "yup".
shareI didn't notice either a "yup" or a "yep", though I'm sure one or the other was there. This was the movie that established Cooper's western style. He had made only two before, The Virginian (1929) and The Plainsman (1936), and his characters were quite different in both of those. All of his subsequent western characterizations are variations of Cole Harden. In his final legitimate western Man of the West (1958) his outfit is almost identical to that of The Westerner. Similarity of the titles is probably not a coincidence either.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Cooper often played a cowpoke during the last few years of the silent screen era, too, before his first full "talkie," "The Virginian," came along in '29.
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Yup, you're right, vindici. I was only counting talkies and lead roles, I guess. I just got one his silent oat-burners, The Winning of Barbara Worth, in a boxed set, but haven't watched it yet and have never seen it. Also bought a box of Greta Garbo's silents, some of which I have seen. With both Garbo and Cooper a major part of the persona is missing when you can't hear the voice. Will be a good show, literally and figuratively, if The Winning of Barbara Worth is as good as The Flesh and the Devil!
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Have never seen "The Winning of Barbara Worth" but I know Coop played his first important role in that picture, opposite the great Ronald Colman (who would go on not only to survive the advent of the "talkie" era, but THRIVE with one of the greatest voices in all filmdom!)
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Trivia: Ronald Colman, an officer in the British Army, was wounded during an attack by his side in World War I. He crawled backwards several hundred yards to his own trench because he was afraid he would be killed by a back wound and thought to have been running away. His famous mustache was fake, because his plastic surgury-reconstructed lip would not grow hair.
-- Source: International Stars at War by James E. Wise, Jr. and Scott Barron, Naval Institute Press, 2002.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Interesting Colman triv, there!
He must have felt the shivers from battlefield memories as he acted out applicable scenes in "Random Harvest" as the amnesiac WWI vet; if so, it probably enhanced his performance all the more.
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Here's a Western and talkie that starred Coop in 1930:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021463/
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Good work, vindici! I should have looked at Coop's filmography before making that post. I always thought is strange that after the box office success of The Virginian, Cooper would not have been given another western for eleven years. I guess his early talkie version of The Spoilers (1930) can also be considered a western of a sort.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Film wags have dubbed the John Wayne/Randolph Scott version of "The Spoilers" and Wayne's "North to Alaska" as "Northerns" lol!
You are correct "in spirit," though--I don't think the 2 or 3 oaters Cooper made after "The Virginian" really measured up to it or to Coop's 1940 return to the genre in "The Westerner."
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vindici:
"...don't think the 2 or 3 oaters Cooper made after 'The Virginian' really measured up to it or to Coop's 1940 return to the genre in 'The Westener.'"
Nope.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Read somewhere that Cooper's father was an immigrant Englishman who became a US citizen and a judge; the senior Cooper sent Gary and another son to England for boarding school for a few years, and when they came back, Gary had to shed his newly-acquired Brit accent or else face endless bullying and ridicule from his cowboy-ish set of peers in Montana!
Elsewhere, I read that Randolph Scott coached Cooper for getting a passable Southern accent for "The Virginian."
Can you affirm (or debunk?) these two trivia tid-bits, old b&w? (I like being validated for my long-held beliefs, but truth trumps all else and I always welcome being better informed than I already am.)
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vindici:
I don't know about the former of your two trivia. The latter is what it says in Scott's IMDb bio, but it is the first I've heard of it. I do seem to remember seeing an interview with Gary Cooper long ago and noticing that his voice was quite different than in the movies, somewhat high-pitched.
As for coaching people on accent....I live in Texas. When folks come here from the 'states, they either learn to speak our "Taxsun" lingo out of self-defense, or they give up and go back whence they came.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
I'm a born-'n'-bred Californian, but I was raised by an Okie grandmother and I spent the majority of my adult life in Oklahoma, so picking up on the accent was a given and it still lingers, somewhat, in my speaking voice even to this day. And I don't mind it one bit!
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We all have skeletons in the closet. I was actually born in Oklahoma, where we lived with my great grandmother until I was 6 years old, when we moved to Texas.
I have a much younger third cousin in Okieland with whom I am madly in love. So how could I have anything against Okies! Most of my dad's relatives live in California, but I wouldn't know any of them from Adam or Eve.
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
Whereas, I'm pretty much a rank stranger to the folks on my mom's side...
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Near the end when Coop is sworn in as a deputy, the sheriff asks if he will pledge to uphold the law etc and he replies "Yep" very quietly and quickly, which could be misconstrued as Yup.
sharemaybe.
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