Tryin' Hard

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I watching "Fighting Caravans", one of the films based on Zane Gray's novel of the same name, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

It wasn't a silent film, but it did a pretty good impression of one.

It is much older and therefore cruder film than Wagon Wheels, despite a higher budget.  And the ersatz Old Gay Couple are much funnier and gayer (well, not 'gay' so much as 'misogynistic', but in 1931 those distinctions were fuzzy). Its plot and the fates of its characters noted how the Oregon Trail signaled the end of an era where the Frontier was still unexplored and unsettled.  That interested me because previously I would have only thought about the Oregon Trail as the beginning of "The Wild West" rather than as the end of the "Frontier West".

It also opened my eyes about Gary Cooper.

And a welcome sight he was.

Like most contemporary folks, my impression of is based mostly on his later work.


Everybody knows is the "real" Gary Cooper, who was born over-the-hill, roughed up, and in over his head.


He was not only an Old Cowboy, he was a famously laconic one.

After all, one picture of Gary Cooper is worth a thousand of his (haltingly delivered) words.


But "Fighting Caravans" was before he got typecast that way and he played a rakish and (comparatively) chatty young buck.  

Here he is in 1926's "The First Kiss", which DEFINITELY looks like it's from the fine folks who make the "Teach Twinks" line of video personal entertainments.

Before he was assigned the Strong Silent Cowboy roles he was, well, this guy:

Finally, after all the years, the lyric:

"Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper"(in the song "Puttin' On The Ritz) now makes sense to me.

Who knew?

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