Separated from his wife Rocky in May 1951, mainly over his affair with Patricia Neal. They did not live together again until July 1954.
Starred in two movies with Teresa Wright, The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and Casanova Brown (1944).
The pallbearers at the funeral were Cooper's close friends - James Stewart, Henry Hathaway, Jack Benny, William Goetz, Jerry Wald, and Charles Feldman. Rocky and Maria walked behind the casket, alongside Cooper's 87-year-old mother Alice and his brother Arthur, as it was borne through the church to the hearse out on Santa Monica Boulevard. Among the top names of Hollywood attending the services were Norma Shearer, Dean Martin, Walter Pidgeon, Buddy Rogers, Marlene Dietrich, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Durante, Martha Hyer, John Wayne, Rosalind Russell, Robert Stack,
The revised 1946 lyric to Irving Berlin's song "Puttin' On the Ritz ("Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper/Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper/Super-duper")refers to Cooper in his early sound and pre-cowboy days when he was considered the height of tall, natural American elegance. This persona is best seen in Ernst Lubitsch's version of Noel Coward's play "Design for Living" (Design for Living (1933))where he is playing a character said to be inspired by Howard Hughes, whom Cooper very much resembled.
There has been much speculation over the years over whether Cooper's close friend Ernest Hemingway may have had latent homosexual tendencies. There is an easy agreement among Hemingway scholars that Papa, as he insisted Cooper should call him, was never actively homosexual, but the fact that he protested his masculinity so much in his novels and in real life has aroused suspicion. Hemingway's tendency to beautify in Cooper the qualities he found beastly in others is provocative. One Hemingway scholar maintained Papa was profoundly impressed that Cooper was such a stud. He said, "I believe that in his mind he loved Gary sexually, but I believe furthermore that Gary Cooper never once suspected it. If I am correct, that proves the beauty of Gary's naiveté, which Papa always found so charming."
Three years after his death, his wife married Dr. John Converse.
Took an acting class from Michael Chekhov
Turned down James Mason's role as an aging movie star falling on hard times in A Star Is Born (1954).
Turned down Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942).
Upon seeing him, a professor in the theater department at Grinnell College recorded "shows no promise."
Was considered for Robert Mitchum's role in The Night of the Hunter (1955).
Was considered for the role of Richard Sherman in The Seven Year Itch (1955).
Was the original visual basis for pulp hero Doc Savage.
Was very good friends with Ernest Hemingway for twenty years. Hemingway shot himself a month after Cooper's death.
With the critical and commercial disaster You're in the Navy Now (1951), the word got out that Cooper was finished. He couldn't even sell a good picture that was a sure-fire formula to begin with - or once had been. He had disappeared completely from the Motion Picture Herald's annual survey of the top ten box office stars. He had been on the list for nine successive years, moving up and down but always there, proof that he was still a guarantee if only as a commodity star. Now he had lost even that. As the host of It's a Big Country (1951), Cooper got fabulous press coverage during filming but after a few engagements it was withdrawn out of embarrassment. It wasted a warehouse of first rate talent - Fredric March, William Powell, Gene Kelly, Ethel Barrymore, Janet Leigh, Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and others. Cooper made another routine western, Distant Drums (1951), and then he made the picture which would prove t
Worked as a Yellowstone Park guide for several seasons before becoming an actor.
Writer Ayn Rand worked as an extra in Hollywood when she came to the U.S. from Russia, and she promptly became a fan of Cooper. When her novel "The Fountainhead" was made into a film, Rand was thrilled that Cooper was starring. Cooper's speech in a courtroom is one that Rand worked on for a very long time. When filming was over, Cooper admitted to her that he hadn't understood it.