- Merian C. Cooper
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Merian Caldwell Cooper 
Merian C. Cooper in Polish Air Force uniform.Born October 24, 1893
Jacksonville, Florida, United States of AmericaDied April 21, 1973 (aged 79)
California, United States of AmericaCause of death Cancer Nationality 
AmericanAlma mater United States Naval Academy
Georgia Institute of TechnologyOccupation Director
Movie producer
Military officerMilitary career Allegiance United States
PolandService/branch United States Navy
United States Army
Polish Air ForceYears of service 1912-1915
1916-1919
1919-1921
1941-1945Rank Brigadier GeneralBattles/wars World War I
Polish-Soviet War
World War IIAwards Mexican Border Service Medal
World War I Victory Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
World War II Victory Medal
Order of Virtuti Militari
Cross of ValourMerian Caldwell Cooper (October 24, 1893 – April 21, 1973) was an American aviator, United States Air Force and Polish Air Force officer, adventurer, screenwriter, and film director and producer. His most famous film was the 1933 movie King Kong.
Contents
Biography
Early life
Born to John C. Cooper, of distant English descent, and the former Mary Caldwell in Jacksonville, Florida, Cooper was educated at The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey and entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912, but was forced to resign in 1915 (his senior year) in a dispute over his belief in air power which the Navy did not share. In 1916, he joined the Georgia National Guard to help chase Pancho Villa in Mexico.
World War I
Cooper served as a DH-4 bomber pilot with the United States Army Air Service during World War I. He was shot down and captured by the Germans, serving out the remainder of the war in a POW camp.[1] According to Stephen Skinner (The Stand), Captain Cooper was allowed to remain in the Air Service after the war, despite serious burns to his arms incurred in the crash of his DH-4. In January 1919, while on special duty with the American Red Cross in France, he located the grave site of Lieutenant Frank Luke, Jr., America's second-highest-scoring ace of World War I. Cooper's subsequent report helped to confirm the identity and location of Lt. Luke's first burial site, which was near the village of Murvaux.
Poland
American volunteers, Merian C. Cooper (left) and Cedric Fauntleroy, in the Polish Air Force's Kosciuszko Squadron
From late 1919 until the 1921 Treaty of Riga, Cooper was a member of a volunteer American flight squadron, the Kościuszko Squadron, which supported the Polish Army in the Polish-Soviet War. On July 26, 1920, his plane was shot down, and he spent nearly 9 months in a Soviet prisoner of war camp. He escaped just before the war was over and made it to Latvia. For valor he was decorated by Polish commander-in-chief Józef Piłsudski with the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.
During his time as a POW, Cooper wrote an autobiography: Things Men Die For by "C". He turned the manuscript over to Dagmar Matson to type for publisher submission. It was submitted to G. P. Putnam's Sons in New York (the Knickerbocker Press) in 1927 and published that same year. Just after the book's release, he changed his mind about releasing the personal details about "Nina" and asked Dagmar to buy up every copy she could find. She managed to acquire most of the 5,000 copies that had been released. Cooper kept a copy and Dagmar kept a copy, while the rest were eventually destroyed. Dagmar sent Nina money every month, on behalf of Cooper, until his death.
Pan American Airways
Cooper was a founding member of the Board of Directors of Pan American Airways, serving on the board for decades. He was a pioneer in the use of aircraft, military and civilian. During his tenure at Pan Am, the company established the first regularly scheduled transatlantic service.
World War II
Though old enough to be free of service in World War II, he enlisted anyway, commissioned as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and accompanied Col. Robert L. Scott to India while serving as a logistics liaison for the Doolittle Raid. He and Scott traveled to Dinjan Airfield, Assam, where they assisted Col. Caleb V. Haynes, a bomber pilot, in setting up the Assam-Burma-China Ferrying Command, which was the origin of The Hump Airlift. He went on to serve in China as chief of staff for General Claire Chennault of the China Air Task Force — precursor of the Fourteenth Air Force — then from 1943 to 1945 in the Southwest Pacific as chief of staff for the Fifth Air Force's Bomber Command.
Leading many missions and carefully planning them to minimize loss of life, he was known for his hard work and relentless planning. At the end of the war, he was promoted to brigadier general. For his contributions, he was also aboard the USS Missouri to witness Japan's surrender.
Later life
In the 1950s and '60s he was a crusader in fighting communism, backing Joseph McCarthy in his crusade to root out perceived communists in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Cooper died of cancer in San Diego, California.
Personal life
Cooper was the father of Polish translator and writer Maciej Słomczyński. He later married film actress Dorothy Jordan.
Film career
Cooper led movie production for RKO Radio Pictures before and after World War II. He frequently collaborated with Ernest B. Schoedsack. Cooper also served as vice president in charge of production for Pioneer Pictures from 1934 to 1936, and vice president of Selznick International Pictures in 1936–1937, before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Cooper started his film career with documentaries for Paramount Pictures such as Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), which combined real footage with staged sequences. In Chang , he used this technique to create a memorable finale featuring an elephant stampede. His movie The Four Feathers was filmed among the fighting tribes of the Sudan.[1]
Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6525 Hollywood Blvd., with first name misspelledThroughout his career, Cooper was a proponent of technical innovation. The film King Kong, which he co-wrote, co-directed, and appeared in, was a breakthrough in this regard. Another outstanding film that he produced in trying to follow up on his success with King Kong was the 1935 film She. Additionally, Cooper helped pave the way for such ground-breaking technologies as Technicolor and the widescreen process Cinerama.
Cooper was a good friend and frequent collaborator with noted Western director John Ford. In 1947, they formed Argosy Productions and produced such notable films as Wagon Master (1950), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Searchers (1956).
Filmography
Year Title Director Producer Writer Cinematographer Executive producer Actor (Role) 1935 She Yes 1933 The Son of Kong Yes 1933 King Kong Yes Yes Yes Yes 1932 Roar of the Dragon Yes 1931 Gow the Killer Yes 1929 The Four Feathers Yes Yes Yes 1928 Gow the Head Hunter Yes 1927 Chang Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes 1925 Grass Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Awards
For his military services to Poland, Cooper was awarded the Silver Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari, which he received from Pilsudski and the Cross of Valour.
In 1927, the Boy Scouts of America made Cooper an Honorary Scout, a new category of Scout created that same year. This distinction was awarded to "American citizens whose achievements in outdoor activity, exploration and worthwhile adventure are of such an exceptional character as to capture the imagination of boys...". The other eighteen men who were awarded this distinction were: Roy Chapman Andrews; Robert Bartlett; Frederick Russell Burnham; Richard E. Byrd; George Kruck Cherrie; James L. Clark; Lincoln Ellsworth; Louis Agassiz Fuertes; George Bird Grinnell; Charles A. Lindbergh; Donald Baxter MacMillan; Clifford H. Pope; George Palmer Putnam; Kermit Roosevelt; Carl Rungius; Stewart Edward White; Orville Wright.[2]
He was nominated for an Academy Award for producing The Quiet Man in 1952, but lost to Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. Cooper did however receive an Honorary Oscar that same year.
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (though his name is misspelled "Meriam C. Cooper").
Miscellany
- In the 1933 version of King Kong, Cooper and co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack appear at the end, piloting the plane that finally finishes off Kong. Cooper had reportedly said, "We should kill the sonofabitch ourselves."
- Cooper personally cut a scene in King Kong in which four sailors are shaken off a rope bridge by Kong, fall into a ravine, and are eaten alive by giant spiders. According to Hollywood folklore, the decision was made after previews in January 1933, during which audience members either fled the theater in terror or talked about the ghastly scene throughout the remainder of the movie. However, more objective sources maintain that the scene merely slowed the film's pace. Legend has it that Cooper kept a print of the cut footage as a memento, although it has never been found.[3][4]
- In the 2005 remake of King Kong, upon learning that Fay Wray was not available because she was making a film for Cooper at RKO, Carl Denham (Jack Black) replies, "Cooper, huh? I might have known."
- Cooper claimed that he got the idea for King Kong after he had a dream that a giant gibbon was terrorizing New York City. When he woke, he recorded the idea and used it for the film.
- On 4 April and 11 April 2007, Turner Classic Movies aired six films that had been produced by Cooper at RKO but had been out of distribution for over 50 years. According to TCM host Robert Osborne, Cooper had agreed to a legal settlement with RKO in 1946, after having accused RKO of not having given him all the money due him from his RKO producer's contract in the 1930s. The settlement gave Cooper complete ownership of six RKO titles—Rafter Romance (1933) with Ginger Rogers, Double Harness (1933) with Ann Harding and William Powell, The Right to Romance (1933), One Man's Journey (1933) with Lionel Barrymore, Living on Love (1937), and A Man to Remember (1938). According to an interview with a retired RKO executive that was used as a TCM promo for the premiere, Cooper allowed the films to be shown in 1955–56 in a limited re-release, and only in New York City.
Starry Squadron
An Interbellum Polish film directed by Leonard Buczkowski, Gwiaździsta eskadra (The Starry Squadron), was inspired by Cooper's experiences as a Polish Air Force officer during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–21. The film was made with the cooperation of the Polish army and was the most expensive Polish film prior to World War II. After World War II, all copies of the film in Poland were destroyed by the Soviets.
Notes
- ^ a b West, James E. (1931). The Boy Scouts Book of True Adventure. New York: Putnam. OCLC 8484128.
- ^ "Around the World". Time (magazine). August 29 1927. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,723029,00.html. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
- ^ Merian C. Cooper. imdb.com Retrieved 2010-07-19.
- ^ Morton, Ray (2005). King Kong: the history of a movie icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson. New York, NY: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. ISBN 1-55783-669-8.
References
- Merian C. Cooper, "The Warfare of the Jungle Folk: Campaigning Against Tigers, Elephants, and Other Wild Animals in Northern Siam," National Geographic, February 1928, pp. 233–68.
- Janusz Cisek, Kosciuszko, We Are Here!, McFarland & Company.
- I'm King Kong!—The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (2005), TCM documentary on Cooper, directed by Kevin Brownlow.
- Mark Cotta Vaz, Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooper, Creator of King Kong, New York, 2005.
External links
Categories:- 1893 births
- 1973 deaths
- People from Jacksonville, Florida
- American people of English descent
- Academy Honorary Award recipients
- American aviators
- American film actors
- American film directors
- American film producers
- American military personnel of World War I
- American military personnel of World War II
- American people of Scottish descent
- Silver Crosses of the Virtuti Militari
- Recipients of the Cross of Valour (Poland)
- Shot-down aviators
- American prisoners of war
- Cancer deaths in California
- World War I prisoners of war held by Germany
- Polish people of the Polish–Soviet War
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