Wednesday - December 18, 2013

gladys cooper, one talented and beautiful english rose, born on this very date in 1888

EYE CANDY from another time.  Sure wish it could come back.

By the time I discovered her as a movie goer and later movies on tv, she was an older woman and often played someone’s auntie or the hard nosed strict head mistress of a school.  It always seemed to me that she was in every single movie ever made in the 1940s’ and a good part of the 50’s. She was a much in demand character actress, and quite believable in every role she played.  Still, she was not a household name but her face would have been familiar to many.  For fans of the Twilight Zone, if you recall the episode of an old woman frightened of death, who was played by Robert Redford, then you’ve seen her. 
Well, quite by accident, I was not looking for her and didn’t even know her name, I found a bunch of photos and was really surprised by what I found.
Am happy to share the treasure. 

GLADYS COOPER, Dec. 18, 1888 - Nov. 1971

Biography
Widely acclaimed as one of the great beauties of the stage, British actress Gladys Cooper had the added advantage of great talent. Daughter of a London magazine editor, she made her stage bow at age 17 in a Colchester production of Bluebell in Fairyland; at 19, she was a member of the “Gaiety Girls,” a famous and famously attractive chorus-girl line. Graduating to leading roles, Cooper was particularly popular with young stage door johnnies; during World War I, she was the British troops’ most popular “pin-up.

.” Switching from light comedy to deep drama in the 1920s, Cooper retained her following, even when leaving England for extended American appearances after her 1934 Broadway debut in The Shining Hour. She made subsequent New York appearances in Shakespearean roles, thereafter achieving nationwide fame with her many Hollywood film appearances (she’d first acted before the cameras way back in 1911 in a British one-reeler, Eleventh Commandment).

Cooper was often cast as aristocratic ladies whose sharp-tongued cattiness was couched in feigned politeness; her film parts ranged from Bette Davis’ overbearing mother in Now Voyager (1941) to the hidden murderess in a Universal “B” horror, The Black Cat (1941)
She won her third Oscar nomination for her role as Prof. Henry Higgins’ mother in My Fair Lady (1964), starred as the matriarch of a family of genteel swindlers on the TV series The Rogues (1964), and even found time to co-star with a very young Robert Redford on a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone.

Posted by peiper     on 12/18/2013 at 10:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography • Awards • Eye-Candy • MOVIES • Talented Ppl. •  
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