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After the Velez period came the di Frasso period. Countess Dorothy (Taylor) di Frasso, an international café socialite and a mature connoisseur of Hollywood juveniles, gradually moved Coop from the nightspots into top-drawer Hollywood society. In 1930 Coop went to Europe with the Countess and a party. She entertained him at her Roman villa, had him spruce himself at The Eternal City's best shops, gave him a social whirl in which his Montana horsemanship and marksmanship deeply impressed the Roman patricians. He came back to Hollywood with improved haberdashery, but otherwise was apparently the same casual, quiet, amiable Coop. Next year he went African big-game hunting with another party including the Countess.
A year later he was back in Hollywood, flat broke, tired of his tailcoat parts and expecting to be fired. But he asked for twice his previous salary and got it. He also began to get many roles that he liked almost as well as millions who watched them. They included: A Farewell to Arms, Desire, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Beau Geste, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. Coop considered his acting more & more. But even when he was "acting to beat hell . . . just pouring it on," his fans praised him for his indestructible naturalness. It is this quality, which almost every American likes to identify with himself, that accounts for Cooper's tremendous appeal to all kinds of Americans. It is also American to believe that the greatest naturalness is to be found in the Great Open Spaces, and to cherish the natives thereof. Years ago, with Tom Mix, Bill Hart and Will Rogers, U. S. moviemakers discovered to their profit these simple truths, and the legend is that a cowboy has saved every studio in Hollywood.
The Cowboy and the Wife. In 1933 at a party at Hollywood Designer Cedric Gibbons', Coop met his host's niece, Veronica Balfe, step-daughter of Governor Paul Shields of the New York Stock Exchange. A striking, vigorous brunette, she was then cinemacting under the name of Sandra Shaw, had first seen Coop in Morocco while she was at the Bennett School (Millbrook, N. Y.). Sandra Shaw appeared in just three pictures, including Blood Money (with Frances Dee and George Bancroft), then became Mrs. Cooper and retired.
The Coopers live in an elaborate white Georgian mansion in Los Angeles' smart Brentwood section. They are surrounded by three and a half acres, a swimming pool, tennis court, dogs, ducks, chickens, a vegetable garden, and a citrus grove that Coop cultivates with a small tractor. Summers the couple usually cross the continent for a couple of months on Long Island, but their Eastern doings, while swank, are in no sense dizzy.