220131 Sentinel, Super Doper Gary Cooper

Gary Cooper was one of the best actors of the late thirties and forties and fifties.
Gary Cooper was a dramatic actor often playing a role as a simple man caught in a tough situation.
I do not remember him in a substandard film. I think some of the ones I like best were made in the thirties and forties. Yesterday I watched “Pride of the Yankees” with Cooper playing Lou Gherig. In the movie he was studying to be an engineer, but when his mother got sick and was hospitalized he dropped out of college and started playing baseball to be able to pay for her hospital bills and as you may know Lou Gherig was one of the best players there ever was and he was a good man who died a horrible death from ALS also known as Lou Gherig disease.

I enjoyed the movie and in it were 2 things that brought back memories. The first was a scene with him studying math and using a slide rule. I don't know if slide rules exist anymore, but I remember having to learn how to use one in my naval training. The intellectual types in high school used to carry them around on their belts, perhaps reminiscent of the brave knights of old.
The second thing in the movie was a short scene where the Yankees were playing the Saint Louis Cardinals in the world series. The scene showed the old original “Sportsman's Park” in Saint Louis in either 1926 or 1934. That doesn’t matter; what mattered to me was seeing the old “Sportsman's Park” again. I have many fine memories of being there for games in the fifties with my grandpa. He had been a ball player for the Saint Louis Browns that originally owned the park and later sold it to the Cardinals. I can still hear the cold beverage men who would walk about in the stands and shout, “Co bea hea, get cha co bea hea.” Those were glory days watching Stan Musial at bat. He batted left handed and Sportmans park was made for him with a shortened right field so he could hit more home runs.
Back to Cooper, some of his movies I enjoyed were Sergeant York, Ball of fire, Meet John Doe and Mister Deeds Goes to Town.” I don't think you could go wrong spending time watching any of the movies mentioned above.