Oscar Profile #20: Gladys Cooper

Born December 18, 1888 in London, England, Gladys Cooper would have one of the most celebrated stage and screen careers of the Twentieth Century. Considered a great beauty even as a child, she became a photographer’s model at the age of six. She made her stage debut at 16 in 1905 in the British touring version of Seymour Hicks’ musical, Bluebell in Fairyland. She married her first husband, Herbert Buckmeister, whom she would later divorce, while appearing in the 1908 musical, Havana. In 1912, she had a starring role in the first London revival of The Importance of Being Earnest and made her screen debut in 1913’s The Eleventh Commandment. She became the unlikely British pin-up queen of World War I in a postcard pose in which she daintily lifts her skirts above her ankles.

She became co-manager of London’s Playhouse Theatre in 1917, a rare opportunity for a woman in those days. She became full manager in 1927, the year Somerset Maugham wrote The Letter for her. She remained in that capacity until 1933. 1927 was also the year she married her second husband, Sir Neville Pearson, whom she would divorce in 1936, marrying her third husband, actor Philip Merivale in 1937 after coming to the U.S. to appear on Broadway in 1934.

Although she had made her talkie debut in the 1934 British film, The Iron Duke opposite George Arliss, she was best known in the U.S. for her stage work, which kept her busy well into 1939. That would all change when Alfred Hitchcock brought her to Hollywood to play Laurence Olivier’s sister in Rebecca. She and Merivale, unable to return to England because of the outbreak of World War II, became permanent alien residents and Cooper quickly became the quintessential grand dame in films, a position she held for nearly thirty years, playing the mother, grandmother or great-grandmother of every major star in Hollywood.

She was Bette Davis’ domineering mother in Now, Voyager, for which she won her first Oscar nomination; the doubting nun in The Song of Bernadette, for which she won her second; Irene Dunne’s standoffish at first mother-in-law in The White Cliffs of Dover; Greer Garson’s middle-aged daughter in Mrs. Parkington, a bit of a role reversal for her; Garson’s benefactor, Gregory Peck’s mother, Jessica Tandy’s mother-in-law and Dean Stockwell’s grandmother in The Valley of Decision; Hume Cronyn’s mother, Tandy’s grandmother and Stockwell’s great-grandmother in The Green Years; the town matriarch in The Bishop’s Wife; and the stern housekeeper in The Green Years, among many others in the forties.

Her best screen role in the fifties was as Deborah Kerr’s controlling mother in Separate Tables. Back on Broadway in 1956, she won her first Tony nomination as Mrs. St. Maugham in The Chalk Garden, a role which would bring her contemporary, Edith Evans, an Oscar nomination when it was filmed eight years later. She would receive a second Tony nomination as Mrs. Moore in the 1962 production of A Passage to India, a role which would win an Oscar for Peggy Ashcroft twenty-two years later.

Overtime on My Fair Lady, for which she received he third Oscar nomination as Rex Harrison’s mother, and the scheduled start of her TV series, The Rogues, co-starring David Niven, Charles Boyer and Gig Young, forced her to drop out of the screen version of The Chalk Garden.

Her last Hollywood film was The Happiest Millionaire, in which she played Greer Garson’s aunt and Lesley Ann Warren’s great-aunt, and got to sing for the first time on screen. Her pointed counter-duet with Geraldine Page, “There Are Those”, is one of the film’s highlights.

Upon her return to England, she was promptly made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth. It was around this time that her son-in-law, actor Robert Morley, made numerous appearances on TV talk shows, beguiling audiences with his tales of his very proper mother-in-law doing very improper things. One involved her punching a bear in the nose in Yosemite National Park because he wouldn’t get out of the way of her car. Another was the time, returning to her hotel after a long day’s filming and no food, she crashed a party for General Motors by telling the doorman “I know the general well.”

Ever the grand dame, while hospitalized with pneumonia in 1971, she wrote a letter to the editors of Time castigating them for giving a cover story to the rock musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, which she considered sacrilegious. The letter was published by Time the following week, the same issue that carried her obituary. She was 82.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

NOW, VOYAGER (1942), directed by Irving Rapper

One of Bette Davis’ best loved films, and rightly so, as she goes from ugly duckling to beautiful swan with the help of Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Max Steiner’s evocative score. Everyone and everything in the film, in fact, is so endearing that we need a villain of enormous ferociousness to stand up to all that goodness, and we get one in Cooper’s unflinching portrayal of Davis’ monster of a mother. She plays a Boston Brahmin widow, who fearing her power over her daughter is waning, throws herself down the stairs, forcing the easily guilt-plagued daughter to stay with her.

THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (1943), directed by Henry King

Best remembered for Jennifer Jones’ radiant performance and Alfred Newman’s magnificent score, this anti-DeMille style religious drama was the first film in which religious figures, particularly those played by Charles Bickford as a parish priest and Cooper as a teaching nun, were portrayed as petty, jealous and mean. Cooper is, in fact, so consumed with hate for Jones throughout most of the film that her transformation when she becomes aware of the enormity of Jones’ physical suffering from tuberculosis of the bone is so complete that it becomes the film’s single most compelling moment.

THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945), directed by Tay Garnett

Greer Garson is the daughter of union leader Lionel Barrymore who takes a job as maid in the home of steel mill owner Donald Crisp and his wife Gladys Cooper, against the wishes of her father. Years pass during which Garson becomes invaluable to Crisp’s family, eventually becoming engaged to his son, Gregory Peck. Then there’s a strike and Barrymore kills Crisp, forcing Garson to leave Peck and disappear. In the meantime he marries nasty Jessica Tandy. They have a son, Dean Stockwell, whose upbringing they are at war over. Unbeknown to anyone, Cooper, who shines in the film’s last section, has been secretly funding Garson’s dress shop in another town and it is there that she takes ill and is brought home by Garson, leading to her death and the film’s settling of old scores.

THE GREEN YEARS (1987), directed by Victor Saville

The film version of A.J. Cronin’s beloved novel is a masterpiece of ensemble acting.

Dean Stockwell is the orphaned son of a Catholic-Irish man and a Protestant-Scottish woman, who after the death of his parents comes to live with his mother’s frugal family. Despite their misgivings, they agree to raise the boy as a Catholic as per his parents’ wishes. The film has a lot to say about religious tolerance and intolerance as well as family values. Hume Cronyn is the villain of the piece as Stockwell’s miserly grandfather. Selena Royle is his kindly grandmother, Jessica Tandy (Cronyn’s real life wife) is their daughter. Charles Coburn is Royle’s irascible father and Cooper is Cronyn’s even more frugal mother with whom Stockwell must share a bed.

SEPARATE TABLES (1958), directed by Delbert Mann

One of the characters in the film is named Gladys, another Miss Cooper, put them together and you get Gladys Cooper in one of her signature roles as shy, homely Deborah Kerr’s bitch of a mother. Some critics have called her performance a replay of the one she gave in Now, Voyager, but the only thing it has in common with that one is that both mothers are mean and controlling. In the earlier film only her daughter stood up to her. In this one, the entire cast does it in the film’s wholly satisfying ending. David Niven as a phony military man and Wendy Hiller as the manager of a seaside hotel won Oscars, while Kerr was nominated. For me, though, Cooper steals the show.