Formal wear origins

Gary Cooper wearing the official British captain uniform
of the 1760s in Unconquered (1947)
When he died in 1961 at the age of
sixty, Gary Cooper was eulogized
around the world as the public
symbol of the honorable American.
In his 37-year film career, he starred
in more than 100 movies, a dozen
of them among the most memorable films ever made. As
a leading actor, he was nominated for an Academy Award
six times, and won twice (for Sergeant York and High Noon),
as well as receiving an Honorary Academy Award for a
lifetime of memorable screen performances.
He appeared in romantic comedies and war movies,
biographies, spy thrillers, historical dramas and films of
social conscience, as well as almost 30 Westerns. High Noon
ranks as one of the half-dozen films defining that genre, and
in the opinion of many critics is the best Western ever made.
In the years spanning his long career there were other
leading men who had a more cynical, street-wise appeal
(Gable, Bogart, Cagney), more sophistication (Charles Boyer,
Ronald Coleman, Cary Grant), more rugged energy (John
Wayne), a darker sensuality (Valentino, Tyrone Power,
Burt Lancaster), more boyish charm (Jimmy Stewart, Joel
McCrea), or more tough-guy panache (Robert Mitchum,
Kirk Douglas, Sinatra). But Cooper was, in critic Richard
Schickel’s phrase, the “Democratic Prince”, a haltingly
shy man of simple virtue and had a code of honour that
unavoidably clashed with politics. He remains one of the
few actors whose portrayals of naivety wear well, without
embarrassment either to himself or the audience. It was a
style based on natural gracefulness, at a time when naivety
and gracefulness were in style.
LITTLE COWBOY TURNS
HANDSOME DANDY
He was born in the frontier town of Helena, Montana at the
turn of the 20 th century, and he got to ride as many horses and
see as many herds of cattle as any cowboy he later portrayed
in films. Both parents were English, and Cooper’s father
insisted that Gary and his older brother Arthur be sent back
to England to the private school that he had attended. And
so by the time he reached his adolescence, Cooper had the
advantage of a rough-country as well as a highly civilizing
education. He had learned his Latin as well as his quarter
horses. It had all something of the American democratic ideal
about it: this handsome young man had learned his manners
and his lessons, and yet was as rough-and-tumble as they
come, and it’s that blend that defined his acting image as the
American Everyman.
When Southern California beckoned, Cooper drifted into
films as a stuntman and extra on cowboy sets. At six foot three
inches, and weighing 185 pounds, with light brown hair and
vibrant blue eyes, Gary Cooper was as handsome as anyone
and looked superb in contemporary clothes, or anything else.
No matter what costume he put on, he looked like he owned it.
The camera loved him, and so did the box office. As a young,
single man in Hollywood, he had the deserved reputation for
acquiring the most beautiful women and fastest sports cars
(and vice versa), not to mention a refined and perfectly tailored
European wardrobe and renowned bachelor’s lair.
Cooper’s best biographer Jeffrey Meyers points out:
“Cooper had natural good taste, always wore elegant clothes
and was one of the best-dressed actors in Hollywood. He inspired
fashion stories in Flair, Women’s Wear Daily, Esquire, and
Movietime, and if he hadn’t been a movie star, he could have
had a great career as a model,” as early photos by Cecil
Beaton, Clarence Bull and others show.
BRITISH AND
ITALIAN INFLUENCES
He had obviously learned something about proper
gentlemanly dress when he was a boarder at school in
England, and Meyers notes that he bought custom clothes
from Savile Row’s finest tailors, shirt makers, and boot
makers whenever he went back to visit. At the end of 1929,
English fashion photographer Beaton photographed him in
Hollywood for Vogue. He said: “He was absolutely charming,
very good looking with black eyelashes as thick as the lower lid on
the upper. Very tall, a good figure, and such a good sort… He was
extremely smartly dressed with a brown hat to match his suit and
gloves, very elaborate gloves with green spots in the lining.”
Cooper worked untiringly in those early years, but after
making four films in the first half of 1931 alone, including
the steamy Morocco, which was Marlene Dietrich’s
introduction to American audiences, he retreated to Europe
for a rest cure. On his return to the U.S.A. in 1932, having
spent several months in Italy, he appeared quite the dandy.
He had trunks full of clothes, and there are many photos of
him at this time sporting elegant double-breasted overcoats
and suits, spotted silk ties and ascots, pristinely cut tweed
sports jackets, fedoras and bowlers, smartly furled English
umbrellas, and sleekly polished handcrafted brogues. His
urbane assemblage included a fresh boutonniere, cigarette
holder, pigskin gloves, and silk pocket square.
The labels in Gary Cooper’s wardrobe read like a Who’s Who
of the best custom tailors, boot makers, and haberdashers
in the world: Brioni, Lesley & Roberts, Caraceni, Battaglia,
Charvet, Huntsman, Anderson & Sheppard, Knize, Turnbull
& Asser, Dunhill, Brooks Brothers. American designer
and friend Bill Blass noted, “More than anyone, Cooper was
responsible for fusing the essentially formless but wearable aesthetic
of the American West with the narrow, formal silhouette of
European design. That set him apart from the Gables and Grants.
That gave him American-icon status.”
Inasmuch as he’s often compared with Cary Grant – both
were incredibly handsome, great dressers, debonair – try to
picture Grant in a Western. Even Grant’s costume dramas
were his weakest performances. To make a different contrast,
John Wayne – although he often played modern soldiers –
was never quite at ease in contemporary dress. And on those
few occasions when Astaire wore western attire, he just
looked silly. Cooper wore it all, and had style in every pore.
The fact that he was something of a dandy and was an
accepted member of international society was kept carefully
private and hidden. It simply didn’t fit his screen persona
that he would have dinner with the Duke and Duchess
of Windsor, discuss art with Picasso, or go hunting with
Hemingway. In the days when there was little irony in
Westerns and the only disturbing darkness came from
the bad guys’ hats, what would we think of cowboys who
had gone to English prep schools, have fiery affairs with
Continental countesses, and hobnobbed with English dukes
and world-renowned novelists? Did Roy Rogers go dancing
at the Stork Club or El Morocco with Dale Evans? But he
was not the simple, monosyllabic cowboy of his latter image.
His more truthful image was captured better by Irving
Berlin: “Dressed up like a million-dollar trouper, trying hard to
look like Gary Cooper, super duper!”
Gary Cooper: An Enduring Style by G. Bruce Boyer,
PowerHouse Books, available at www.amazon.com
G. Bruce Boyer
‘COOPER HAD NATURAL
GOOD TASTE, ALWAYS WORE
ELEGANT CLOTHES AND WAS
ONE OF THE BEST-DRESSED
ACTORS IN HOLLYWOOD.’
Lionel Stander, Muriel Evans, Gary Cooper who wears a tailcoat,
formal waistcoat and bow tie in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Cooper, alongside with Claudette Colbert, wearing a black tuxedo in Bluebeard’s
Eighth Wife (1938)
Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945)
and Gary Cooper wearing a double-breasted suit at Lake Success,
New York on April 3 rd 1953
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© Action Cinemas
© US Federal Archives