Gladys Cooper : Absolutely stunning actress…

in more ways than one.

I first noticed her in Separate Tables, one of my most favorite films. She really is unbeatable as the absolutely detestable "Mrs. R-B" (as David Niven's character always addresses her). I started out focusing on Deborah Kerr, but as the week wore on, (I saw it three times over three days paired with The Innocents) I found myself looking more and more at Gladys Cooper. While I liked her loathsome character a great deal, (if that isn't too much of a contradiction) I found myself examining her face more and more. Thankfully, I had the privilege of seeing the film on the Silver Screen as her features are well worth taking a look at. You could tell, even at age 70, she must have been a great beauty in her day.

Later on, I was lucky enough to catch her in Rebecca. She has a pretty lightweight role in that one, but I was glad to have the chance to see her nearly 20 years younger. No mistake about it: she must have turned a great many heads in her day.

Finally, I just finished watching the Twilight Zone Episode Nothing in the Dark a few minutes ago. I've put off watching that particular episode for more than year, despite its being on the same disk as Night of the Meek. Somehow, the combination of knowing the episode was about death and the old lady's terrified face in the thumbnail photo for the episode on the back of the DVD made me reluctant to watch it.

I needn't have worried: it was one of the most moving episodes of The Twilight Zone I've ever seen. The scene where she's torn between her fear of letting anyone through her front door and wanting to help a fellow human being is one of the most moving scenes I've ever watched in TV and film; every line of her face told us what she was feeling. I'm not ashamed to say I cried during that scene and at the end, too (her relief is so profound at discovering that death isn't so bad after all).

I liked the scene where her and Harold Beldon hold hands, too. I don't know how this is going to sound, but I found it moving that an actress of Gladys Cooper's generation was holding hands with someone who was just getting started in the acting profession. I felt like she was "passing the torch," so to speak.

Gladys Cooper was also in Song of Bernadette, a film I was lucky to see in January as part of a Jennifer Jones retrospective. If you haven't seen that movie, please do: you owe it to yourself. Her role as a bitter, spiteful nun is really something to watch (Vincent Price's performance is very good, too).

Finally, I've enjoyed her thoroughly as Rex Harrison's mother in My Fair Lady which, I just realized, was filmed a couple of years after Nothing in the Dark. She was very good in that one and I'll have to pay particular attention the next time I see it (God willing) as I've just learned from her IMDb biography that the portrait Henry Higgins has over his firepace is her, painted circa 1922. Wow.

Here's a picture of her at the height of her beauty:

http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg55/storeynicholas/gladyscooper.jp g

I hope you agree with me when I say that she was a stunning actress in every sense of the word. "Well done, Gladys!" (to paraphrase one of her lines from My Fair Lady. :)


Edit: 2AM typing typo

To see someone whose career spanned so many years, growing from a child model to a renowned beauty through all of the stages of the roles an actress can play, is a true inspiration.

She really was wonderful.

If you haven't already, check out Now, Voyager, The Bishop's Wife, and her other two Twilight Zone episodes.

So glad that you first mentioned Separate Tables in your post, since I saw the film last night for the very first time in my life, and I thought she was absolutely terrific in it. Of course, it was hard to avoid comparisons with another fabulous performance by her, perhaps in her most famous movie: Now, Voyager. But there are certainly some subtle nuances that make both characters somewhat different, which only proves how fabulous an actress she was.

I also loved her terrific performance as the cruel nun in The Song of Bernadette, among many others. Ms. Cooper was one of those great actresses who never disappointed.

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Animal crackers in my soup
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop

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Fran, I've been watching her on the flop 1960's show THE ROGUES and she is as wonderful as ever at age 76!! She is surely one of the great character actresses of all time although she curiously does not seem to get much attention even in film buff circles. You would think her unforgettable turn in NOW, VOYAGER would assure that!

I watched her tonight in THE BISHOP'S WIFE and was reminded once again how much Dame Maggie Smith (whom I frequently regard as my favorite overall actress and often a great beauty in her own right) favors her. Anyone else notice how much the two of them look alike?

Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!

Stunningly beautiful too, some of them pics from the 40's are wowzers.

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