Why does John Wayne have more staying power in the American memory than Gary Cooper who, during his lifetime, was as popular as the Duke? An essay from Terry Teachout, the wonderful cultural critic and writer who passed away several years ago. One of my favorite writers and someone who seemed a fundamentally decent guy. I read everything by him though his subjects were often artists and genres I didn't care for, yet he could make me interested. And an incredible eloquent speaker.
Nevertheless, Cooper and Wayne are likely to strike the casual observer as having been cut from the same bolt of cloth. Tony Soprano described its pattern in the first episode of The Sopranos when he asked his psychotherapist, “Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type. That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings—he just did what he had to do.” Both men were not so much performers as presences, rugged-looking outdoor types who were capable of dominating the frame simply by striding into it, and when they got around to saying something, it was in craggy baritone voices that matched their weather-whacked faces.
Above all, Cooper and Wayne were leading men pur sang, the kind of personalities to whom your eyes reflexively shift whenever they’re in a shot. What a star is, they were. As Howard Hawks said, “If you don’t get a damn good actor with Wayne, he’s going to blow him right off the screen, not just by the fact that he’s good, but by his power, his strength.” Cooper was no less potently endowed with the same quality. When Niven Busch was wrestling with one of his scripts, Cooper told him, “Well, Niven, seems to me if you make me the hero it usually comes out right.” Nothing else worked for either man, which is why they were still playing leads long after their contemporaries had shifted into supporting parts.
