Friend Gary Cooper visiting Wayne on the set of Operation Pacific, 1951
via dedicatedtoduke (originally dedicatedtoduke)
The only achievement I am really, really proud of is the friends I have made in this community; and I use the word community in it’s larger sense. Just looking around this room makes me feel that my life has not been wasted. And if anybody asks me, am I the luckiest guy in the world? My answer is, yup.
Gary Cooper at his Friar’s Club Roast, January, 1961.
via gregorypecks (originally gregorypecks)
BOOTS AND SADDLES
Caricatures by Jedla
As his offering of the month, caricaturist Jedla here raises the high lights and douses the shadows in the faces of six stalwart Hollywood gentlemen who have something in common. Somewhere along the course of their careers they discovered that man’s best friend is his pinto. Lean, rugged, as quick on the draw as they are with a kiss for the honest rancher’s daughter, they wear their boots tightly lapped over their dungarees and meet cold steel with more of the same. Movie two-gun men have felt the force of their wrath from Dodge City, Kansas, to Butte, Montana. No one weaned on a steady diet of film fare should suffer even a moment’s perplexity deciphering their faces, even though they are garbed above in less Western garb than usual. One hint for what it’s worth: in stark contrast to ponymen of the Bronco Billy and William S. Hart tradition, these hombres are at home in drawing rooms. Finally, and just in case, here they are, from left to right, top row first: Brian Donlevy; Fred MacMurray; John Wayne; Randolph Scott; Gary Cooper; Joel McCrea.
In 1958 newspapers complied a list of the 12 most powerful actors in Hollywood. These men were not under constrictive studio contracts. They demanded the best best roles and highest salaries, and they got them! They were named, the “Golden Dozen”.
via bertandmorty (originally bertandmorty)
John Wayne Denies Confrontation With Sinatra
May 15, 1960: Witnesses say John Wayne and Frank Sinatra nearly got into a fight during a benefit dinner at the Moulin Rouge over Wayne’s comments about Sinatra hiring blacklisted writer Albert Maltz for “The Execution of Private Slovik.” Later in the evening, Sinatra and a companion allegedly roughed up a valet. The next day, Wayne denied that there was any confrontation with Sinatra. “I like Frank,” he said.
The city attorney declined to file charges against Sinatra in the incident, but his companion, John Hopkins, was convicted of battery and sentenced to 10 days jail and a year’s probation for hitting valet Edward Moran. Moran also filed a $100,000 civil suit against Sinatra, but The Times didn’t report the outcome.
I can tell you one thing, I would be routing for Frank in that fight.
2 years ago on 14 May
2011 @ 9:00pm
“
I’ll tell you about Carl Foreman and his rotten old High Noon. Everybody says it was a great picture because Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly were in it. But it’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my life! The last thing in the picture is ol’ Coop putting the U.S. Marshal’s badge under his foot and stepping on it. I’ll never regret having helped run Foreman out of the country.
~
John Wayne
I say sour grapes. And also, to be PROUD of running someone out of the country? Someone who wrote something as good as High Noon?? Not a likable man to me.
25th Annual Academy Awards - Backstage
HOLLYWOOD, CA - MARCH 19: Non-Oscar winning actor John Wayne (1907-79) (C) smiles while standing backstage at the 25th Annual Academy Awards with businessman and producer Howard Hughes (1905-76) (L) as he holds two Oscar statuettes; one for absentee actor Gary Cooper, who won Best Actor, and one for director John Ford, who won Best Director, for their work on the motion picture ‘High Noon’ at the RKO Pantages Theatre on March 19, 1953 in Hollywood, California.
via letsaskforthemoon (originally letsaskforthemoon)
