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Mae West (born Mary Jane West) was a major star in the early and mid 1930s, as famous for her racy comments and raw sexuality as for her actual acting achievements. She was the toast of Broadway during the late 1920s, because for ten years, she had starred in a series of very sexy plays, including "Sex" in 1926, for which she was prosecuted on morals charges in 1927! In 1928, she starred in "Diamond Lil" (which later became the 1933 movie "She Done Him Wrong"). But due to censorship difficulties, she made very few movies, and those were greatly toned down versions of her stage successes. Some of her movies include: Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, I'm No Angel, Belle of the Nineties, Goin' to Town, Klondike Annie, Go West Young Man, Every Day's a Holiday, My Little Chickadee, The Heat's On, Myra Breckinridge, and Sextette! She passed away in 1980 at the age of 87. AND Gary Cooper was born Frank James Cooper in Helena, Montana, USA in 1901. His mother was English born, and he and his brother were sent to an English boarding school to be educated when they were young, but when WWI broke out, they were brought home.

His father was a judge who also owned a ranch, and Cooper went to college, but did not graduate, and ran his father's ranch afterwards, and also drew some cartoons for the local paper. When he was 23 his father left the bench and sold the ranch and his parents moved to California, and because Cooper could not make a living at his cartooning, he moved with them.

After a year of odd jobs, he started getting extra roles in movie westerns. He signed a contract with Paramount, and changed his first name to Gary. Cooper got progressively better roles in non-talkie movies, and had romances with some of his more famous co-stars, including Clara Bow and Lupe Velez.

In 1927, he played a small, but important role of a doomed flyer in Wings, which was a major breakthrough for him, and led to many better starring roles the following year. In 1929 he starred as the title character in The Virginian, which was made in both a talkie and non-talkie version.

He had become the man that women everywhere swooned over, and men wanted to be like him. In 1930 he starred in Morocco, opposite Marlene Dietrich, and in 1932 he was hand picked by Hemingway to star in A Farewell to Arms, and in 1936 he starred in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film).

He had his pick of movies, and many of the ones he turned down were then offered to similar actor Joel McCrea, who basically lived in Cooper's shadow throughout the 1930s. He turned down the lead role in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (it started out as a Mr. Deeds sequel), and James Stewart got the role. He turned down the lead in Stagecoach, and that part made John Wayne a major star after toiling in B-westerns for many years.

His greatest blunder was turning down the role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. He said at the time, "Gone with the Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I'm glad it'll be Clark Gable who' falling flat on his nose, not me"!

In 1941, Alvin York, the most decorated soldier in WWI, finally agreed to a movie being made of his life (to help recruiting efforts in WWII), but he insisted that only Cooper could play him, and Cooper won his first Oscar for that role in Sergeant York. The next year Lou Gehrig tragically died, and Cooper played him superbly in The Pride Of The Yankees (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), and his "Today I am the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech is one of the great moments in movie history!

He was Robert Jordan in Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), and Ayn Rand picked him to play Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. In 1952 he had one of the finest roles of his career, as Will Kane in High Noon, and he won a second Oscar. In 1960 he got prostate cancer, and he died the following year, at 60 years of age.

There will never be another star like Gary Cooper! He stayed a major leading actor for 25 solid years, starring in around 90 movies, and during that time he was the lead in important movies of all sorts, because so many writers, directors, and co-stars wanted him for their star!

I highly recommend all the movies noted above, but you really can't go wrong with any Gary Cooper movie, for his presence elevated even his lesser movies into something worth watching! AND W.C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania in 1880. He showed his remarkable talents early, beginning with a juggling act when he was a teen. He left home and worked that act in vaudeville, later traveling to Europe, and appearing on Broadway in 1906. Although he had initially been a non-talking juggler (this helped when he performed in countries where they did not speak English), he started making comic asides in his act, and soon they were a bigger and bigger part of his appeal. In 1915, Fields made the short film, Pool Sharks, where he performed his tricks on a specially made pool table (a routine he performed in the Ziegfeld Follies). He also made another short film that was shown during his Follies Act, His Lordship's Dilemma. But otherwise, Fields spent all his time on his stage act. In 1924, Fields took a minor role in a Marion Davies movie, and that led to two starring roles in movies directed by D.W. Griffith, and suddenly Fields was a major movie star in his mid forties! Fields was one of the few great silent comedians who was able to seamlessly make the transition to sound movies (another was Laurel and Hardy). While he was a great physical slapstick comedian, sound actually added quite a bit to his appeal. In the early 1930s he not only appeared in some marvelous features (Million Dollar Legs, It's a Gift, and many others) but he also made the series of wonderful shorts for Paramount Pictures (The Fatal Glass of Beer, The Dentist, and more). Fields made some great movies in 1939 and 1940 (when he was 60!), You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, My Little Chickadee, and The Bank Dick (where he played Egbert Souse, pronounced "Soo-say"). But he had many ailments related to his alcoholism, and he made just a few film appearances in the early 1940s. When Fields was dying in 1946, the story goes that a friend visited him at the sanitarium where he was staying, and found the lifelong atheist reading a Bible. When asked why, Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes"! He passed away in 1946 at the age of 66. Fields made many wonderful movies, but if I had to recommend two to start with, it would be It's a Gift (which includes the great sequence in the store with Mr. Muckle, the nearly blind and deaf old man) and The Bank Dick (which includes the great sequences of Fields being conned into buying the worthless Beefstake Mine stock, and subsequently re-selling it to the hapless Og Oggilby. As Fields tells Og, "Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf! Don't be a jabbernowl! You're not one of those, are you?")

Important Added Info: Note that this great candid shows Emanuel Cohen, the head of Paramount Studios, at a testimonial banquet that the employees gave him. Surrounding him are Mae West, Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Wesley Ruggles, and Carl Brisson. What an amazing assemblage of talent in a single photo!

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