Gladys Cooper was the daughter of journalist William Frederick Cooper
and his wife Mabel Barnett. As a child she was very striking and was
used as a photographic model beginning at six years old. She wanted to
become an actress and started on that road in 1905 after being
discovered by Seymour Hicks to tour with his company in "Bluebell in
Fairyland". She came to the London stage in 1906 in "The Belle of
Mayfair", and in 1907 took a departure from the legitimate stage to
become a member of Frank Curzon's famous Gaiety Girls chorus
entertainments at The Gaiety theater. Her more concerted stage work
began in 1911 in a production of Oscar Wilde's comedy "The Importance
of Being Earnest" which was followed quickly with other roles. From the
craze for post cards with photos of actors - that ensued between about
1890 and 1914 - Cooper became a popular subject of maidenly beauty with
scenes as Juliet and many others. During World War I her popularity
grew into something of pin-up fad for the British military.
In the meantime she sampled the early British silent film industry
starting in 1913 with
The Eleventh Commandment (1913).
She had roles in a few other movies in 1916 and 1917. But in the latter
year she joined Frank Curzon to co-manage the Playhouse Theatre. This
was a decidedly new direction for a woman of the period. She took sole
control from 1927 until other stage commitments in 1933. She was also
doing plays, some producing of her own, and a few more films in the
early 1920s. It was actually about this time that she achieved major
stage actress success. She appeared in W. Somerset Maugham's "Home and
Beauty" in London in 1919 and triumphed in her 1922 appearance in
Arthur Wing Pinero's "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray". It was ironic that
writer Aldous Huxley criticized her performance in "Home and Beauty" as
"too impassive, too statuesque, playing all the time as if she were
Galatea, newly unpetrified and still unused to the ways of the living
world." On the other hand, Maugham himself applauded her for "turning
herself from an indifferent actress (at the start of her career) to an
extremely competent one". She also debuted the role of Leslie Crosbie
(the Bette Davis role in the 1940 film) in Maugham's "The Letter" in
1927.
In 1934 Cooper made her first sound picture in the UK and came to
Broadway with "The Shining Hour" which she had been doing in London.
She and it were a success, and she followed it with several plays
through 1938, including "Macbeth". About this time Hollywood scouts
caught wind of her, and she began her 30 odd years in American film.
That first film was also Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood directorial
effort, Rebecca (1940). Hers was a small and light role as
Laurence Olivier's gregarious sister,
but she stood out all the same. Two years later she bit into the much
more substantial role as Bette Davis' domineering and repressive mother
in the classic Reise aus der Vergangenheit (1942)
for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best
Supporting Actress - the first of three. Though aristocratic elderly
ladies were roles she revisited in various guises, Cooper was busy
through 1940s Hollywood.
She returned to London stage work from 1947 and stayed for some early
episodic British TV into 1950 before once again returning to the US,
but was busy on both sides of the Atlantic until her death. Through
the 1950s and into the 1960s Cooper did a few films but was an
especially familiar face on American TV in teleplays, a wide range of
prime-time episodic shows, and popular weird/sci-fi series: several
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits. When Enid
Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden" opened in London in 1955, Cooper debuted
as Mrs. St. Maugham and brought it to Broadway in October of that year
where it ran through March of 1956. Her last major film was
My Fair Lady (1964) as Henry
Higgins' mother. The year before she had played the part on TV. In the
film, the portrait prop of a fine lady over Higgins' fireplace is that
of Cooper painted in 1922. She wrote an autobiography (1931) followed
by two biographies (1953 and 1979). In 1967 she was honored as a Dame
Commander of the Order of British Empire (DBE) for her great
accomplishments in furthering acting.
