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Gary Cooper, 1926
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About Gary Cooper's first starring role in a movie being from 1926's "The Winning of Barbara Worth":
"At six foot four, with brown hair and chiseled if irregular features, the young man appealed to [screenwriter] Frances [Marion] immediately. Hedda Hopper claimed that he was so "her type" of man that when Frances first saw him standing against the wall of the studio building, ‘she gave him a second look and as she went through the door, even risked a third.’
Twenty-four-year-old Frank Cooper was a judge’s son from Helena, Montana, who had so far succeeded only in landing a few jobs as an extra, but he ‘had his heart and soul set on playing Abe Lee [in "The Winning of Barbara Worth"].’
He had paid twenty-five dollars to have his own screen test made, but it only showed him riding and dismounting a horse and neither [Henry] King nor [Samuel] Goldwyn thought very much of it.
Frances concluded it was because male stars still tended to be ‘pretty boys’; the director and producer didn’t think women would be attracted to what she was the first to admit was a ‘gaunt, slow moving self conscious young man.’
But knowing how both she and Sam [Goldwyn]’s secretary had reacted to him, Frances suggested organizing a screening of his and other actors’ tests in front of a group of female office workers at the studio. The immediate response from their collective libido proved that the two women were not alone[...]
Frank Cooper, changing his first name to 'Gary' so that he would not be confused with another actor with the same name, was hired at fifty dollars a week.”
- Excerpt from "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood", by Cari Beauchamp
"At six foot four, with brown hair and chiseled if irregular features, the young man appealed to [screenwriter] Frances [Marion] immediately. Hedda Hopper claimed that he was so "her type" of man that when Frances first saw him standing against the wall of the studio building, ‘she gave him a second look and as she went through the door, even risked a third.’
Twenty-four-year-old Frank Cooper was a judge’s son from Helena, Montana, who had so far succeeded only in landing a few jobs as an extra, but he ‘had his heart and soul set on playing Abe Lee [in "The Winning of Barbara Worth"].’
He had paid twenty-five dollars to have his own screen test made, but it only showed him riding and dismounting a horse and neither [Henry] King nor [Samuel] Goldwyn thought very much of it.
Frances concluded it was because male stars still tended to be ‘pretty boys’; the director and producer didn’t think women would be attracted to what she was the first to admit was a ‘gaunt, slow moving self conscious young man.’
But knowing how both she and Sam [Goldwyn]’s secretary had reacted to him, Frances suggested organizing a screening of his and other actors’ tests in front of a group of female office workers at the studio. The immediate response from their collective libido proved that the two women were not alone[...]
Frank Cooper, changing his first name to 'Gary' so that he would not be confused with another actor with the same name, was hired at fifty dollars a week.”
- Excerpt from "Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood", by Cari Beauchamp
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