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Gary (christened Frank James) Cooper was born in Helena on May 7, 1901. He went to Helena public schools till he was nine, then for four years to the Dunstable School near the Cooper family home in England (where Cooper père moved the family for that period), then to the Bozeman, Mont. High School and to Iowa's Grinnell College for two years. Like all healthy young Montanans of the time, he learned to shoot, fish, ride horses and punch cattle for fun, but his ambition was cartooning, and during high school he took drawing lessons four hours a day. After leaving Grinnell in 1924, he tried free-lance cartooning on a Helena newspaper, punched cows on his father's ranch, attempted to invade commercial art in Chicago. The invasion was repulsed. He used up his funds getting to Los Angeles, where "at least I wouldn't freeze to death," took a job selling electric signs and got fired for not selling any.
For a year Coop was a cowboy extra, then Sam Goldwyn saw him in a bit part in a western, gave him the second male lead at $75 a week with Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman in The Winning of Barbara Worth. During the filming he began to get his established reputation as a silent pardner, on and off screen. On location he was tented with a Chinese vaudevillian who threw knives at the gophers, an old hack comedian, and a card-sharping bit player. Coop watched the three playing poker, caught on to the sharper. One night he joined the game and, in the best horse-opera style, wordlessly placed a gun on the table. He won.
After Barbara Worth appeared, Paramount offered him $200 a week. Coop said: "Sure." He bought a jazzy red Chrysler roadster, and Paramount moved him out of the Wild & Woolly into a bit part in the war-flying drama, Wings. He looked into a tent, waved a casual good-by to his pals Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, and gave them a faraway smile suggesting a prescience that he was about to be killed in action. There was so much public comment on this little scene that Paramount gave Coop a long-term contract.
His next half-dozen pictures greatly increased his box-office rating, and Hollywood also began to get a personal line on him. It was noted that the taciturnity and the occasional other-worldly look were accompanied by no little quiet practicality. When a $300 contract ran out, Paramount offered Coop $600. Coop learned that Paramount was already committed to exhibitors for four more Cooper pictures. He went fishing and shooting for a month and let Adolph Zukor think it over. Coop went back to work for $1,750 a week.
It was also noted that Coop's person appealed to Hollywood's ladies as well as to the box-office queues. In Wings was redheaded Clara Bow, a violently impulsive young woman. Hollywood Journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns once wrote that when Clara "decided to root for the U. S. C. football team . . . they never won another game all season." Clara and Coop toured the Hollywood nightspots in his red Chrysler until Lupe Velez, with Latin vehemence, cut in for the better part of three years. Lupe and Coop often invited visitors to a retreat in Hollywood's snug Laurel Canyon, where guests were said to have been intimidated by a pair of caged but live and screaming eagles.