Movie Review: Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen, a Documentary Directed by John Mulholland (2013)

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Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway in Sun Valley, Idaho, 1940.

Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway.

Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway were two men who achieved massive success in their professions. Even today, nearly sixty years after their deaths, they are legendary figures in American culture. The 2013 documentary, Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen, written and directed by John Mulholland, examines their twenty-year friendship.

Mulholland makes clear the parallels between the two men’s lives, and they are fascinating. Cooper and Hemingway died just six weeks apart in 1961, and both men have become examples of rugged, outdoorsy American men. The film does a nice job of showing how Cooper and Hemingway were different from their media personas, and how they astutely kept their media images intact. Cooper once said that he had only read half a dozen books, thus preserving his image as a simple “yup” and “nope” fella. The truth was, he had studied art at Grinnell College, and was a very intelligent person, with deep knowledge about surprising subjects. And of course, there was more to Hemingway than the blustering macho man who went on bullfights and safaris and hunted for Nazi submarines off the coast of Cuba. 

When Cooper and Hemingway met in 1940, they were both at career peaks. Hemingway was about to publish For Whom the Bell Tolls, a resounding success. (It’s not my favorite Hemingway book—I agree with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s take on it: “It is a thoroughly superficial book which has all the profundity of Rebecca.” The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald, p.335) Cooper was about to make Sergeant York, the film that would win him his first Oscar. Cooper and Hemingway hit it off immediately. Hemingway had based Robert Jordan, the hero of For Whom the Bell Tolls, partially on Cooper’s screen persona. Cooper ended up playing Robert Jordan in the 1943 movie of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Cooper had earlier played Frederic Henry in the 1932 film of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, but the two men did not meet then. Hemingway disliked the movie, but admired Cooper’s performance. 

The film follows Cooper and Hemingway over the next twenty years. We see how both men were besotted with much younger women in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Cooper had a long affair with 23-year-old Patricia Neal, his co-star in 1949’s The Fountainhead, which eventually led to a separation from his wife Veronica, known to all by her nickname, “Rocky.” Hemingway was trying to have an affair with 19-year-old Adriana Ivancich, who became the inspiration for the character of Renata in Across the River and into the Trees. (The film notes that when Adriana met Gary Cooper, she was quite besotted with him, which no doubt infuriated Hemingway.) 

However, both men came roaring back in 1952, as Cooper starred in what is probably his best-known role, as Sherriff Will Kane in High Noon, and Hemingway won praise and acclaim for his novella The Old Man and the Sea. But as the 1950’s went on, Hemingway found it harder and harder to finish any of his writing. Although he lived for nine more years, The Old Man and the Sea would be the last book Hemingway published during his lifetime. Both men were struggling as the 1960’s dawned: Cooper with the cancer that would take his life, and Hemingway with drinking, depression, writer’s block, and numerous physical ailments. Cooper died on May 13, 1961, just a week after his 60^th birthday. Hemingway, who felt that he could not write any more, took his own life on July 2, 1961. And so, both men passed into the realm of legends. 

Several people note the fact that Cooper was one of the few people who could kid Hemingway. I wonder if part of the reason for this was because Hemingway wasn’t competing with Cooper. Hemingway had poor relationships with other authors, as he saw everything as a competition.

Just read the 1950 New Yorker piece that Lillian Ross wrote about Hemingway, where he compares himself to other authors, using boxing as a metaphor: “I started out very quiet, and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard, and I beat Mr. deMaupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendahl, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”

Cooper and Hemingway made me recall just how much I like Gary Cooper, and how effortlessly cool he was. Cooper was a strikingly handsome man, one of the few actors who could look at ease in both a tuxedo and Western clothes. On the screen, Cooper had an easy charisma that drew the viewer in. No matter what he was doing on screen, you couldn’t take your eyes off of Gary Cooper. Everything Cooper did onscreen looked effortless, which led some to conclude that he wasn’t really acting at all. One of my favorite stories about Cooper comes from the making of Vera Cruz, his 1954 western with Burt Lancaster. Lancaster was an intense performer, and when filming started he felt he had to compensate for Cooper’s low-key energy. But when Lancaster saw the rushes from the first few days of shooting, he realized exactly what Cooper was doing: “There I was, acting my ass off. I looked like an idiot, and Coop was absolutely marvelous.”

Cooper and Hemingway is filled with interviews from people who knew both men very well, and it’s quite a star-studded cast, including many people who are longer with us: George Plimpton, Patricia Neal, Charlton Heston, Budd Schulberg, Robert Stack, and Elmore Leonard. There’s also a great scene at the end with a centenarian who is still with us: Kirk Douglas, who reads the letter he wrote Cooper just before Cooper’s death. Douglas, who was then filming Lonely Are the Brave, which became one of his signature performances, wrote to Cooper that the director’s only advice to him was: “Play it like Gary Cooper would.” 

Also interviewed is Maria Cooper Janis, the only child of Gary Cooper. She has great stories about her father, and she does an excellent job of keeping his legacy alive by sharing stories through the official Gary Cooper Instagram account. (Her husband Byron Janis composed the score for Cooper and Hemingway.) 

With a running time in excess of two hours, Cooper and Hemingway is probably too long, but the stories it tells are fascinating. (Confession: I did not watch the film in one sitting.) It’s narrated by Sam Waterston and features the always excellent Len Cariou as the voice of Hemingway. (Fun fact: Len Cariou originated the role of Sweeney Todd on Broadway. He’s also a crossword puzzle favorite, thanks to his short, unusual first name.) 

If you’re a fan of either Gary Cooper or Ernest Hemingway, you’ll find much to enjoy in Cooper and Hemingway.

Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster in "Vera Cruz" (1954)

I recently watched the 1954 western "Vera Cruz," starring Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper. It's a very good movie, and somewhat ahead of its time. It's also a really fun movie to watch. The plot is really complicated, and it takes place in Mexico after the U.S. Civil War, during the Franco-Mexican War. Gary Cooper plays, well, Gary Cooper, of course. Actually he plays Ben Trane, a former Confederate soldier. (Gary Cooper from the South? Really?) In these post-Civil War westerns, why does everyone play a former Confederate? Aren't there any former Union soldiers doing anything interesting? Of course Trane was one of those nice Confederates who was just protecting his family farm, or whatever, and just happened to fight for the side supporting slavery. Lancaster plays Joe Erin, an American living in Mexico. After Trane and Erin meet, they team up to become mercenaries and make some easy money. They eventually meet Emperor Maximilian I, who hires them to escort a countess to the port of Veracruz. From that point on, there are crosses and double-crosses, as the plot thickens and leads to the inevitable showdown between Trane and Erin.

Cooper does a good job playing the sort of character he played a lot, the decent, good-hearted fellow. But it's Lancaster who steals the show as the villainous Joe Erin. Lancaster uses all of his movie star chemistry to make us like Erin, even though he's clearly a bad guy. It's a flashy performance, and for it to succeed, Burt needed a more subdued actor like Cooper to play off of. Lancaster does everything he can to draw attention to himself, from eating like a wild animal at the emperor's banquet to nearly breaking the fourth wall by turning to the camera and giving a huge grin for no reason at all as Erin finishes washing his face. Lancaster draws you into liking Erin, even though he's a contemptible man. Erin's outbursts of violence are random, as when he picks on one of his fellow outlaws as the men are dancing. He isn't violent for any specific reason; he's violent just because he can be. In a way, Erin is an early example of an anti-hero, a character type that movie audiences would see much more of in the 1960's. Because of Erin's sociopathic nature and the rather violent story, some critics have seen "Vera Cruz" as a precursor to Sergio Leone's westerns of the 1960's. Lancaster gives a great performance, and he definitely elevates the movie.

Lancaster's production company produced "Vera Cruz," which meant that, typical of the movies that Lancaster produced, the script wasn't finished when filming began, and the film went over budget. Fortunately, "Vera Cruz" was a big hit and it didn't matter. Originally, Lancaster was going to play the Ben Trane part, and he apparently wanted Cary Grant to play Joe Erin. Cary Grant in a western? As a villain? Grant said, "I don't go near horses." Lancaster then took the role of Erin and approached Cooper for Ben Trane. Clark Gable had just seen Burt in "From Here to Eternity" and advised Cooper to turn the part down, telling Cooper, "That young fella will wipe you off the screen, Gary." Cooper said yes anyway. (Gable would go on to star with Lancaster in the 1958 submarine movie, "Run Silent, Run Deep.") When shooting started, it was Lancaster who had doubts about Cooper's acting style. After the first few days of filming, Lancaster told a friend, "Coop is just throwing this away. Coop isn't doing anything. I have to compensate. I have to put energy into the scenes." But once the rushes from the first few days came back, Lancaster said, "There I was, acting my ass off. I looked like an idiot, and Coop was absolutely marvelous." Once he saw how effective Coop's silent style was, Lancaster ordered that the first three days of the film needed to be reshot. Also typical of Lancaster movies, Burt was involved in just about every aspect of the film, which annoyed director Robert Aldrich. (Burt was kind of a control freak; it’s probably just as well that he and Warren Beatty never made a movie together.) And how did the two stars get along, conservative Cooper and liberal Lancaster? Very well, despite being almost complete opposites, according to "Against Type," Gary Fishgall's biography of Burt. Lancaster would even serve as an honorary pallbearer when Cooper died of lung cancer in 1961.