In October 1947, Cooper testified before the
House Committee on Un-American Activities. He did not name names, but was considered a friendly witness. Although Cooper was politically conservative, his vague, evasive statements raised questions about his agreement with the proceedings.
Cooper had high-profile relationships with actresses
Clara Bow,
Lupe Vélez, and the American-born socialite-spy Countess Carla Dentice di Frasso (née Dorothy Caldwell Taylor, formerly wife of British pioneer aviator
Claude Grahame-White). Sir
Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with Cooper. Cooper lived with the openly gay actor
Anderson Lawler for a few months in 1929.
On
December 15 1933, Cooper wed Veronica Balfe, (
May 27,
1913 -
February 16 2000). Balfe was a New York
Roman Catholic socialite who had briefly acted under the name of
Sandra Shaw. She appeared in the film
No Other Woman, but her most widely seen role was in
King Kong, as the woman dropped by Kong. Her third and final movie was
Blood Money. Her father was governor of the
New York Stock Exchange, and her uncle was
Cedric Gibbons. During the 1930s she also became the California state women's Skeet Champion. They had one child, Maria, now Maria Cooper Janis, married to classical pianist
Byron Janis.
Eventually, his wife persuaded Cooper to become a Roman Catholic in
1958. After he was married, but prior to his conversion, Cooper had affairs with several famous co-stars, including
Marlene Dietrich,
Grace Kelly, and
Patricia Neal. Cooper's daughter Maria, when she was a little girl, famously spat at Neal, but many years later, the two became friends. Cooper separated from his wife between
1951 and
1954.
He was friends with
Ernest Hemingway, and spent many vacations with the writer in the winter wonderland of
Sun Valley, Idaho.
In 1961, Cooper died of
prostate cancer six days after his 60th birthday, and was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in
Culver City, California. Years later, his body was moved to Sacred Heart Cemetery,
Southampton,
New York. He had undergone surgery for
prostate cancer which had spread to his colon in the previous year, but as there were no means of monitoring the progress of cancer in those days it then spread to his lungs and then, most painfully, to his bones. Cooper was too ill to attend the
Academy Awards ceremony in April 1961, so his close friend
James Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the next day newspapers all over the world ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer". One month later Cooper was dead.
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