Gary Cooper - The Signature Collection (Sergeant York / The Fountainhead / Dallas / Springfield Rifle / The Wreck of the Mary Deare)

Here you have them--Five Gary Cooper Classics in one package. Of this group, I like Sergeant York and the Wreck of the Mary Deare the best. They are all great movies, that you may think you have not seen, but when you get into them, you may realize you have. They are part of being an American. Sergeant York--the biography of a WWI soldier and his heroism. Dallas--not so much about the city, at this point in time a hitching post and a watering hole, but about by products of the Civil War, The Fountainhead--a story about a great American architect, artistically incorruptable, based loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright, The Wreck of the Mary Deare--Gary finds himeself in the abandoned hulk of a ship, and is drawn into mystery and intrigue, and The Springfield Rifle--Gary goes through the humiliation of having a yellow streak painted down his back for cowardice by the Cavalry. What great acting he does in this one as we feel his humiliation but we also feel the foreshadowing of a little more to the story than meets the eye. You can see it on his face. He projects it. What great films. These are part of most Americans of a certain age's viewing history. And you can enjoy them again and again, as you ponder what makes up a real American. No one can show us on film like Gary Cooper.

We were happy to find this collection available through Amazon. Gary Cooper is a favorite of ours and we had been looking for a copy of The Fountainhead and could not find it in the stores here. To find it in this collection with other shows that we have enjoyed was an extra plus.

This a wonderful collection of Coop's best movies. Our personal favorite is Sgt. York.





















This is a wonderful collection of Coop's best. Sgt York is our personal favorite.

This signature collection of films starring Gary Cooper that are now under the control of Warner Home Video is a great tribute to an actor whose film career spanned 35 years. Two of the films are 5 star films - "The Fountainhead" and "Sergeant York", two more are 4 star films - "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" and "Springfield Rifle", and one film is a 3 star work - "Dallas". The idea of the signature collections is to present the best performances of an actor or actress in as good a group of films as possible, not vice versa. Thus, you don't necessarily have the best movies a particular performer did, but you do have their finest performances.

"Sergeant York" gets the best treatment of the collection, with a special two disk edition that includes a commentary track by film historian Jeannine Basinger, the classic Warner Brothers cartoon "Porky's Preview", the vintage short film "Lions for Sale", several Gary Cooper film trailers, a very good documentary on the making of Sergeant York, and a documentary on the life Gary Cooper. Cooper does a very good job in holding your attention in a rather long film tribute to the story of Alvin York, who pretty much single-handedly killed 32 German soldiers and captured 132 others during World War I. This performance won him his first Best Actor Oscar.

The role of Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead" must have been a difficult one to pull off, but Cooper does it with style and with believability in a real departure from his other screen roles. Here he is still the rugged individualist, but a different kind than what you're probably accustomed to seeing. I've never bought into Ayn Rand's philosophy, but this movie is very well done with some great performances, even if you do have a hard time buying the motivations of the supporting players. The film comes with a featurette on the making of the film, and is quite enlightening.

The other three films do not have extra features. My favorite of the three is "The Wreck of the Mary Deare". Here Cooper costars with Charleton Heston as a mysterious ship captain found alone on a ghost ship when Heston's salvage company runs across the abondoned vessel. Through a large part of the film you can't tell if Cooper is playing a crazy man, a criminal, or one of the good guys. It's a good combination maritime adventure and courtroom drama and also features a good performance from a very young Richard Harris in a supporting role.

No Gary Cooper collection would be complete without some westerns, and so we have "Springfield Rifle", which is a rather obscure but excellent western with plenty of twists and turns in the plot. "High Noon" it is not, but it will still hold your interest with Cooper playing a dishonorably discharged Army officer during the late stages of the Civil War. Finally, there is "Dallas", another western and the least entertaining of the five films. It is above average, but that is about all. The best part of the film is seeing Raymond Massey, who often plays self-righteous parts, play a murderous villain. Don't get me wrong, Cooper plays the fugitive ex-Confederate soldier to perfection, it's just the material itself that could have been better.

Warner's still has several other good Gary Cooper films it has not released to DVD yet, so perhaps there will be a volume two. If so, one wish I have that I hope is granted is that Warner Bros. rescues "Meet John Doe" from the public domain and includes it.

On this collection there are two of the best films ever made by Coop : Sergeant York (1941) and The Fountainhead (1949)which contain extras and interesting featurettes but why were chosen as part of this collection such B Westerns as Dallas (1950) and Springfield Rifle (1952)and a lower than average film like "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" (1959)? It would be a far better product if titles such as Saratoga Trunk (1943), Task Force (1949) and The Hanging Tree (1959)for example (Warner has the property rights in each case) would have been considered. It is my hope that a 2nd Volume (like in the case of Errol Flynn & Humphrey Bogart Collections)would be prepared soon.