Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)

As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34)

Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was an American. He wasn’t in touch with his feelings, he just did what he had to do. (The Sopranos, “Pilot,” 1999)

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INTRODUCTION

From the late silent era to the final years of the studio system, Gary Cooper was one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men. He garnered critical praise for his performances in Mr. Deed Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1937), Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941), The Pride of the Yankees (Sam Wood, 1943), and High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), and was immortalised in Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz.” As one of the first to demonstrate the power of naturalistic acting in the sound era, Cooper highlighted the ineffable relationship between the actor and the camera. Despite his dominance in Hollywood’s Golden Age, he is arguably becoming a forgotten figure to today’s cinematic layman: a name that younger generations feel they should know but cannot quite explain who he was or what films he is known for.

Within the discipline of film studies, Cooper remains a relatively neglected cinematic figure. In key texts on cinematic masculinity (Bingham, 1994; Lehman, 2001; Tasker, 2012) and the postwar Hollywood Westerns (Carter, 2018; Coyne, 1998; Pippin, 2010), he is either an absent or a diminished figure compared to many of his contemporaries. There have been some important studies of Cooper in recent years, primarily focusing on his star persona (Toles, 2003: Brown, 1995), demonstrating his unique position in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Jeffrey Brown’s study illustrates Cooper’s dual star persona: a hypermasculine figure who, through the conventions of cinema, was frequently feminised and sexualised. Focusing on his early career (1926-1933), Brown demonstrates how Cooper’s possibly fluid cinematic persona (regarding masculinity and femininity) was intertwined with how he was viewed both on- and off-screen, including the influence of predominantly female fans in propagating his earlier career. Brown concludes: “Gary Cooper’s star image was constructed as a masculine ideal fetishized by hypermasculine roles and explicitly feminized by cinematic conventions of filming” (Brown, 1995: 213). Brown’s study sets the foundation for further examination of Cooper’s star persona, providing a robust and provocative framework for how we might view the actor. It is surprising that thirty years after Brown’s article, very little progress has been made in further examining the actor’s star persona.

This article builds on Brown’s study by exploring Cooper’s dual-star persona and deconstructing three romantic comedies, all co-written by Billy Wilder and directed by prominent filmmakers at different moments in Cooper’s life: Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938), Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941), and Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957). These films have not been picked because they are necessarily Cooper’s best romantic comedies but because they demonstrate twenty years of his career and deal directly with the politics of the bedroom. In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire, the narrative’s gender dynamic invokes The Taming of the Shrew and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but are flipped so that, respectively, it is the husband who must be tamed and the sexually repressed male academic (instead of the young princess) whom the heroine’s kiss must free. By transforming these well-known stories, these films place Cooper in positions allocated initially to women. On the other hand, Love in the Afternoon does not flip the gender dynamic per se; instead, Ariane’s (Audrey Hepburn) mimicry of Frank’s (Cooper) lifestyle allows the film to overtly critique the sexual politics between an older rich man and a younger woman. Finally, my analysis will, through its focus on nearly twenty years of Cooper’s career, demonstrate how the sexualisation and objectification of Cooper’s body throughout his career changed as he moved into middle age.

GARY COOPER’S BODY

While other male stars from the period, such as Cary Grant, were occasionally cast in feminine roles (Britton, 2009: 7), the objectification of Cooper illustrates a duality in his persona that is perhaps unique to him. Cooper’s duality was not limited to a single genre but transcended his career and public image. The representation of Cooper’s body must be understood beyond mere appearance and instead viewed as an enduring symbolic construction carefully crafted through narrative, cinematic conventions, and the Hollywood publicity machine that penetrated even traditional masculine genres such as the Western. For example, in an advert for Along Came Jones (Stuart Heisler, 1945) in Photoplay (July 1945: 13), Cooper is seen hugging the waist of his female co-star (Loretta Young). He is presented in a passive role, lovingly looking up at Young, and his facial features, not his brawn, are emphasised.

Despite certain physical similarities and an association with the Western genre, Cooper’s and John Wayne’s bodies are presented differently and often develop antithetical meanings. Deborah Thomas’s study of Wayne’s body in the Western suggests that he is a symbol of strength, endurance, and sexual restraint (1996: 75-87) (Fig. 1). Alternatively, I argue that Cooper’s body in his early career symbolised feminine beauty, youthfulness, and a rampant sex drive, and during the 1950s that same body reflected regret, mortality, and a vigorous, if somewhat compromised, sexual appetite (Fig. 2).

The sexualisation, brutalisation, and scrutiny of Cooper’s body can be seen in numerous genres (dramas, Westerns, and war pictures), highlighting how his hypermasculinity and physical endurance are frequently intertwined with the audience’s gaze. For example, in High Noon, the audience and the townsfolk watch as Will Kane (Cooper) struggles against the odds to stay alive. Following his fight with Harvey Pell (Lloyd Bridges), Kane becomes overtly conscious of people looking at his wounded body (Fig. 3). The film’s thematic focus on Kane’s survival, as opposed to the town itself, enables Cooper’s body to transform into the physical symbol of Kane’s suffering. The film presents Cooper’s body as the symbol of masochistic endurance and sexual humiliation through offhand comments about Kane’s sexual relationship with Helen Ramírez (Katy Jurado) or the sweat running down his face during the final shootout. Cooper’s age is emphasised through the many close-ups of his face; wearing no makeup, the harsh sunlight emphasises the bags under his eyes and lines across his face. He is presented as a once powerful man who, in middle age, finds himself physically and socially scrutinised by both the town and the audience. When Kane asks the churchgoers for help, his faith and sexual past are questioned as, one by one, the flock turn their back on him. In a medium shot, Cooper stands awkwardly, his arms almost limp by his side. He fidgets with his hat, sometimes holding it directly in front of his crotch, which reinforces the relationship between his body and Kane’s suffering (Fig. 4).

Throughout his career, Cooper’s posture and movement would reflect the character’s vulnerability by emphasising the lower half of his body, specifically his crotch. In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Michael (Cooper) attempts to woo his wife, Nicole (Claudette Colbert), who, on marrying him, refuses to consummate their marriage. During one of his many failed attempts, Nicole lures him into a kiss, only for him to discover that she has just consumed a large quantity of onions (which he hates). Michael enters a fit of rage and, at one moment, leans in and suggests he could force himself on her. However, Nicole playfully blows the smell of onions in his face, causing a repulsed Michael to retreat. Cooper steps back, almost as if he has been kicked somewhere uncomfortable, reflecting Michael’s passivity in their relationship and emasculation by Nicole. Similarly, in Love in the Afternoon, Frank (Cooper) gets Ariane to sit on his suitcase to help him lock it. With his arms on either side of the suitcase, Ariane cannot move from the bed, and Cooper leans his body in as if to kiss her. Ariane’s passivity in the encounter is brief. After Frank states that the lid of a brand-new suitcase was crushed in Japan, Ariane responds: “What do you expect? Six Geisha girls and one suitcase?” Cooper then moves backwards, his arms limp and hanging by his side, once again as if he has been nudged or kicked in the crotch (Figs. 5 & 6).

In both Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Love in the Afternoon, Cooper uses his entire body to underline moments in which his sexuality is being mocked by the woman he is trying to seduce. Subsequently, his crotch becomes a symbol of emasculation and metaphorical castration instead of masculinity and hypersexuality. Despite often playing powerful and armed men, Cooper’s performance during interactions with his female co-stars draws the audience’s attention to his character’s vulnerability and weakness. Whether he is the sexually frustrated Michael or the womanizing sexual addict Frank, Cooper’s performance emphasises his crotch to the extent that he undermines these characters’ financial and physical dominance over the women in their lives.

In Ball of Fire, Cooper plays Professor Potts, a reserved virginal academic whose sexuality is woken by the sexually independent and worldly showgirl Sugarpuss (Barabra Stanwyck). During the sequence where Sugarpuss attempts to persuade Potts to let her stay at the academic’s house, she consciously encourages him to look at her legs by pointing out a run in her stockings. Taking her stockings off, she lifts her leg up suddenly and points her foot directly toward his crotch, saying “Feel that.” While Nicole and Ariane’s comments castrate and mock Michael and Frank’s sexuality, Sugarpuss’s comments and actions are used to awaken his repressed sexuality directly (Figs. 7 & 8). Of the three films, Ball of Fire is the only instance when the female lead overtly seduces Cooper’s character through hypersexualised methods. It is also the only instance where Cooper’s female co-star appears to draw the audience’s attention to the actor’s and character’s crotch. Whereas Nicole frustrates Michael by refusing to offer him any sexual or physical interaction, and Ariane torments Frank by suggesting her sexuality is not exclusively directed toward him, Sugarpuss rattles Potts by implicitly offering sex. Stanwyck and Cooper’s performance during this interaction reinforces the crotch as both a symbolic and actual weakness to this sexually repressed character. He is a logical and controlled man who quickly loses control when presented with overt female sexuality.

By pointing her foot at his crotch, Sugarpuss also unites the two competing gazes in the most explicitly sexual moment of all three films. Throughout his career, the audience’s gaze is carefully linked with Cooper’s body. Unlike in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Love in the Afternoon, the audience’s gaze in Ball of Fire is shared equally between Cooper and Stanwyck. Sugarpuss exudes sexual freedom and confidence, whereas Potts reacts awkwardly whenever his appearance attracts female attention. As a seasoned performer, she is aware of how she moves, poses, speaks, and behaves around men to get the desired response. Her first appearance highlights her awareness of the gaze and her control over it. The camera moves across the nightclub as the band starts playing “Drum Boogie.” We then cut to a shot of a curtain; a long, elegant hand can be seen holding the side of it, tapping to the music. At the appropriate moment, Sugarpuss opens the curtains and moves to the front of the stage, where she starts singing. Dressed in a revealing and shiny dress, she moves her hips to the beat of the music. Sat at the back of the club, Potts becomes aware that the women around him are also moving their hips to the beat of the music, and he awkwardly looks down at his notepad and scribbles down the words “drum boogie.” Bathed in the spotlight, Sugarpuss dominates the stage and the audience’s attention; only the drummer, Gene Krupa, can compete for almost equal attention. It is Sugarpuss’s stage, and she engages with the audience on her terms (Fig. 9, 10 & 11).

Throughout the film, we see Sugarpuss’s attempts to attract Potts’s gaze and his attempts to avoid looking at her. One example is when she first arrives at the institute: Potts takes her coat and turns to place it carefully over the chair. His eyes are fixated on the task at hand; he only notices that she is wearing her revealing dress from the show once he turns back to her. Surprised, he steps back, almost falling over as if someone has tried to swing something at him. He appears uncomfortable and encourages her to put the coat back on. Although he has seen her in this outfit earlier in the evening, Potts appears uncomfortable about a hypersexualised woman being displayed in the inviolate space of his sanctuary. Sugarpuss is well aware of the effect that she is having on Potts and purposely references a run in her stocking before sitting down and stretching out her exposed leg. Potts avoids looking at her body and fixates on her face as they speak. He is determined not to “gaze” at Sugarpuss. Knowing she needs to change tactics as Potts refuses her a place to stay the night, Sugarpuss takes her stocking off her leg and lifts her foot toward his crotch, saying, “Feel that.” The humour in this interaction stems from her awareness of what she is verbally and physically insinuating and his awkwardness in response to what her body is making him feel. Unlike his familial-like relationship with his fellow academics, Potts is not in control when he is around her. This is partly due to her confidence and worldly persona and Pott’s loss of control can be equally attributed to Sugarpuss’s sexuality.

The competing sexual gazes are best represented later in the film, when Potts informs Sugarpuss that she must leave the academics’ house immediately due to the distraction she is causing to their research: “Make no mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body.” Potts proceeds to explain how he has been sexually aware of Sugarpuss, describing his response to her breath on his ear and the sunlight in her hair.

Sugarpuss: What did ya do about it?

Potts: I left the room, dipped my handkerchief in cold water and applied it to the back of my neck. (pointing) Right there, where the nerve centre is.

When her attempts to stay once again fail, she informs Potts that she came to the institute because she was sexually attracted to him:

Sugarpuss: I came on account of because I couldn’t stop thinking about you after you left my dressing room. On account of because I thought you were big and cute and pretty.

Potts: (pointing at himself) Pretty?

Sugarpuss: Yeah, I mean you. Oh, maybe I’m just crazy, but to me, you’re a regular yum-yum type.

Potts: Yum-yum?

Sugarpuss: Yeah, don’t you know what that means?

Potts: No, we never got to that.

Sugarpuss: Well, we’ve got to it now, and I’m glad it’s out. I don’t give a whoop whether the others went for me. You’re the one I’m wacky about, just plain wacky. Can you understand that?

Potts: Please, Miss O’Shea.

Sugarpuss: Oh, please, nothing. Maybe you can generate or whatever it is for all that suppress business, but (moves in) I can’t. (Attempts to kiss  him) No, you’re too tall.

While this sequence climaxes with Sourpuss’s seduction of Potts, it also demonstrates the two gazes film (Figs. 12, 13 & 14). As Potts awkwardly describes his sexual attraction to Sugarpuss, the audience is once again made aware of her sexual appeal. However, she quickly flips the situation when she describes him as “big and cute and pretty.” From that moment on, the gaze is fixated on him as she attempts and then succeeds in seducing him. Her reference to his height (“you’re too tall”) reinforces the audience’s attention to his body. Notably, while the audience’s gaze moves from Sugarpuss to Potts, always she is in control and fully aware of her sexual appeal. When Potts describes how he became aroused by her with the light on her hair, Sugarpuss proceeds to move toward the window to recapture that moment. Sugarpuss remains throughout the film actively in control of how people look at her, whereas Potts remains completely passive through his inability to understand and utilise his sexual appeal and sexuality. He is also completely passive and enslaved to his sexuality, unable to resist Sugarpuss’s deliberate attempts at arousing him.

Beyond Potts’s interactions with Sugarpuss, the film overtly references the female gaze in Potts’s encounters with his benefactor, Miss Totten (Mary Field). As she and her lawyer (Larsen, played by Charles Lane) complain to the research team that their work is taking too long and costing too much money, her facial expression and demeanour are cold and snappy. Standing out of her eye-line, Potts remains silent for much of the conversation. However, when he finally intervenes, Miss Totten’s behaviour and body language change. Looking up at him from her chair, she blushes and smiles like a schoolgirl with a crush, saying (coyly) “Hello, Professor Potts.” Throughout the rest of the exchange, Miss Totten repeatedly looks up at Potts and then, blushing, looks back down at her lap. The movement of her eyes, up and down, emphasises Potts’s height and highlights the sexual appeal of his entire body. Potts, aware of the gaze but unaware of why he warrants her attention, is stiff and awkward. The framing of the sequence places Miss Totten in the foreground and Potts to the left behind protected by a barrier of books and a typewriter. His colleagues, who show far more open interest in sex and women than he does, appear to understand why he has attracted the women’s attention. As Potts speaks about their research, Professor Gurkakoff presses a point in Potts’s back, causing the younger academic to make a “wo-oh” sound that Miss Totten reads as a confirmation of his gaze on her (Figs. 15, 16 & 17).

The scene is, therefore, twofold: it reinforces Potts’s role as Snow White in this story, with his seven dwarfs (or professors) impishly guiding, preening, and influencing him. It also establishes that Potts is aware of the female gaze on him but is too sexually innocent to connect the female gaze with his sex appeal. The books that physically separate him from Miss Totten illustrate that, whether consciously or not, Potts’s “eternal sleep” (academia) protects him and his virginity. When Sugarpuss first kisses him, she uses a pile of books to reach his lips. And thereby, she literally and metaphorically pulls down his self-made barrier to awaken his sexuality and take his virginity. While both Cooper/Potts and Stanwyck/Sugarpuss compete for the audience’s gaze throughout the film, the film uses Potts’s uncomfortableness around being seen sexually as an ongoing comedic asset. This suggests that the narrative is as much about Potts coming to terms with his own sexual appeal as it is about his relationship with Sugarpuss.

In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Love in the Afternoon, the gaze is exclusively directed toward Cooper. In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, the film encourages the audience’s gaze on Michael early on. When Michael and Nicole first meet in a department store, he tries to buy a pajama shirt while the store staff argue he must also buy the pajama trousers. Nicole then interrupts with a solution: she will buy the trousers and Michael will buy the shirt. When deciding which set to co-purchase, Nicole suggests a pair of striped pajamas. Michael seems displeased with the idea until she suggests he is a “stripey type”:

Nicole: I was watching you.

Michael: You were?

Nicole: Oh, I hope you don’t mind?

Michael: (smiling) Not a bit.

Nicole: Well, I said to myself, now, if I had to select pajamas for that gentleman, what would I choose? Moreover, let me tell you, if ever there was a stripey type, it’s you.

Michael: (blushing and laughing) Stripey type.

Michael then moves to a set of three mirrors, where he tries on the shirt and looks at himself in the mirror (Fig. 18). Despite Nicole’s comments being designed to get her way, her words both flatter Michael due to the suggestion that he is the object of her gaze and encourage the audience to mimic said gaze. Michael seeks the same compliment later in the film when the marriage is on the rocks, and his sexual frustration has caused him to hire a private detective. Meeting in the hallway of their apartment, Nicole acknowledges that Michael has grown a moustache, but she refuses to compliment his appearance or linger on his body. Michael, now insecure, instantly goes into his bathroom and shaves the moustache off. This interaction indicates his desire to be seen sexually by Nicole and her refusal to compliment him through her gaze.

The performativity in his attempts to seduce Nicole further attracts the audience’s gaze: we watch the cogs in Michael’s head turn as he makes one wrong decision after another. With the symbolic castration of his body through Nicole’s refusal to go to bed with him, the audience watches the once-confident red-blooded Michael transform into an anxious, awkward, and self-conscious mess. Although Nicole seeks to make Michael jealous of her suggested lovers, she is never presented as overtly sexual. Even when she wears a sumptuous evening gown during the onion scene, the camera never lingers on her body like it does with Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire. Cooper’s body, not Colbert’s, dominates the frame throughout the scene. This highlights that Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife is not a film about the sexualisation of women but instead is about the taming and feminisation of a husband.

While the gaze is emphasised in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire through the dialogue and narrative, Love in the Afternoon embeds in the cinematography and framing. This is perhaps because Love in the Afternoon’s now middle-aged Cooper plays a far less carefree and unproblematic romantic lead, unlike the earlier Cooper-Wilder films. The representation of Cooper’s body is linked to both the actor’s and the character’s age. In her analysis of Love in the Afternoon, Marylin Throne argues that it is a film that began as a romantic comedy but “mutated into something more” (Throne, 1988: 73): a dark and complex story that is benefited, not hindered, by Cooper’s visible age. Discussing the criticism around Cooper’s age, Throne attacks the issue head-on, suggesting that replacing Frank with a more youthful-looking actor would be whitewashing the predicament these two lovers are in. For the audience to understand the sexual dynamic and politics between Frank, Ariane, and even Claude, the audience must be confronted by Frank’s age, not hidden from it. In reference to Wilder’s attempts to hide Cooper’s age with dim lighting and minimal close-ups, Throne argues:

[On Wilder’s anxiety over Cooper’s appearance] If so, Wilder’s concern was misplaced, and it is fortunate that his subterfuges could not camouflage the actor’s age, for the impact of the film depends on that face emerging from the initial, shadowy, candle-lit, romantic suite scene to the reality of the daylight and the bags under the eyes and the weathered features. (Throne, 1988: 71)

In the shadows of the candlelight, we see Cooper’s silhouette echo a physique that has been sexualised for decades, emphasising the actor’s height, shoulders, jawline, and distinct hairline. Much like Ariane watching Frank dance with Madam X from the balcony, we are fixated on Cooper’s body, not the woman he embraces. In a close-up, we see Ariane mesmerised as she looks Frank up and down (Fig. 19). When she warns him of the jealous husband outside with a gun, Frank remains in the shadows, lit by hard low-key lighting that emphasises his features. Similarly, during the opera sequence, Ariane first observes Frank through her spyglass from afar, watching him interact with his date and behave restlessly during the performance (Fig. 20). When the audience is in the foyer, Ariane watches Frank from the other side of the room as he moves through the crowd and stares at other women. Because of the crowd and Cooper’s height, Frank towers over the other audience members, whose faces are obscured by each other. When a series of women walk past him, Frank looks them up and down, highlighting his short attention span and constant womanising. Because of the framing, Cooper takes up nearly all of the screen and the women’s bodies are obscured. The audience’s gaze remains that of Ariane, who focuses on Frank rather than the women he is sexualising. The Cooper-centric gaze also reinforces Frank’s enduring weakness, a wealthy and driven businessman who seems unable to control or hide his innate lust for women.

The symbolic representation of Cooper’s body and age in Love in the Afternoon is ever-present, even during sequences involving no women. In the first hotel scene, there is a moment when Frank and Monsieur X are alone together in the bedroom while Ariane is by the balcony checking on the escaping wife and Frank. Looking for his wife, Monsieur X opens the door to the wardrobe. The reflection on the wardrobe’s internal mirror reveals Frank casually standing by the bedroom door, pretending there is nothing or no one to find. Frank is briefly visible out of the shadows with the main electric light filling the bedroom. His unromanticised self is exposed briefly, but with Ariane out of the room and Monsieur X busy searching for his wife, no one notices the man reflected in the mirror. Likewise, when Claude (Maurice Chevalier) reveals that the girl that Frank has been sleeping with is his daughter, the film cuts between two well-lit medium shots of the two men. The exposure emphasises the similarities in the men’s ages; Claude stares directly at Frank, and the aging Don Juan finally appears to feel an innate sense of guilt over his treatment of women (Figs. 21 & 22).

The relationship between lighting and Frank’s age is reinforced throughout the film, indicating a duality of character that is often masked by the shadows. Ariane appears uncomfortable about her surroundings only once the jealous husband has left, and the two are finally alone. As she attempts to leave the hotel as quickly as possible, the room is now noticeably better-lit than before, and Frank’s haggard appearance and thinning hair are more noticeable. It is the first time that Ariane sees the man instead of the candlelight illusion. Although this thematic depiction of the cinematography appears to have been an accident due to Wilder’s anxiety over Cooper’s appearance, the result is that the audience is both invited to gaze at him and then confronted by what they are sexualising. As noted by Gene D. Phillips, and known by very few people at the time, Cooper had incurable cancer that had already started to affect his appearance, causing him to appear more in his sixties than in his fifties (Phillips, 2009: 191). The physical decline of Cooper’s appearance and health during the late 1950s reinforces the dichotomy between the imaginary Frank in the shadows and the real Frank in the light: this juxtaposition is heightened, not hindered, by Cooper’s former sexual appeal and the sexualisation of his body throughout his career (Fig. 23).

The changing dynamic between Cooper’s body and the gaze during his career demonstrates both how he was sexualised throughout his career and how, during the final decade of his life, his aging body confronted audiences with the complex nature of its objectification. His performance shows that Cooper’s body was not automatically a symbol of hypermasculinity or strength. His height and crotch, which could have been symbols of macho power and libido, become emasculated reflections of the characters’ insecurities around confident and independent young women.

GENDER FLIPPING

I have suggested the sexualisation of Cooper’s body is more commonly accompanied by the feminisation of his image and his forced passivity. In narratives that play with gender dynamics, Cooper’s performance and body lend themselves to tensions around gender and sexual relations. In William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion (1956), Cooper plays a passive husband to a Quaker minister (Eliza, played by Dorothy McGuire). Jess (Cooper) manages in small ways to achieve freedoms within his wife’s strict religious household, such as racing their Methodist neighbour (Sam Jordan, played by Robert Middleton) to their respective churches and secretly buying a small organ for the house. The latter victory is only purchased after Jess spends the night in the barn with his wife, presumably where the two make love (Fig. 24). In the matriarchal home, Jess must use sex for his freedoms, not Eliza. The sexualisation and feminisation of Cooper in this film are further emphasised when the camera lingers on Jess cutting wood shirtless, one of only two times in the film when a character is half naked. While this sequence could be designed to highlight the character’s physical strength as a counterpoint to the pacifist values that are otherwise emphasised by the film, it also serves to reinforce the couple’s power dynamic through the audience’s invitation to gaze at Cooper’s body. As Brown illustrates, the dressing and undressing of Cooper in his films are linked to the star’s hypermasculinity and feminised persona, a duality that occasionally reflects homosocial and homoerotic undertones and traditions (Brown, 1995: 194). How the narratives utilise Cooper’s body is demonstrated through their successful feminisation or emasculation of his characters.

In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ball of Fire, and Love in the Afternoon, Cooper’s characters are transformed through their relationships with women. In the case of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire, the narrative overtly gender flips well-known stories, positioning Cooper in the traditionally female role. Richard W. McCormick demonstrates that Ernst Lubitsch’s comedies, throughout his career, flip traditional gender roles through the presence of strong female characters who “conquer” the men they love (2020: 248). In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Lubitsch, Wilder, and co-writer Charles Brackett consciously play with the sexual politics of marriage, highlighting the financial exchange that occurs: the husband is given sexual favours for the financial and domestic security he gives his wife. Michael, who has cheated on and divorced many wives, has abused these transactions through his crude (albeit generous) prenuptial contracts. By refusing sex, Nicole mocks Michael’s presumption about their transaction. She attacks the hypocrisy of his approach to marriage. At the end of the film, Nicole and her father (Marquis de Loiselle, played by Edward Everett Horton) purchase the mental institution where Michael is being treated and place him in a straitjacket for Nicole to rekindle their relationship. At this moment, the film flips the gendered exchange, making Nichole the purchaser of the now passive Michael. The monetary worth of Cooper’s body is reinforced again in Delmer Daves’s The Hanging Tree (1959), which climaxes with Elizbeth (Maria Schell) and Rune’s (Ben Piazza) purchasing of Doc Frail (Cooper) from the mob who is about to lynch him. With Rune describing himself earlier in the film as Doc Frail’s property, an exchange that underlines the undiscussed homoerotic elements of the films, and Frail’s equal control over Elizbeth, the final monetary exchange with the mob demonstrates how even one of Cooper’s most morally ambiguous roles ultimately shows him become passive and dominated by the woman he loves. The Hanging Tree also demonstrates that even as late as 1959, Cooper’s body was presented as something to be coveted and purchased (Figs. 25 & 26). The objectification of his body was no doubt partly solidified in the late 1920s when he was publicly described as Clara Bow’s “sex toy” (Brown, 1995: 197). Yet while seedy and salacious Hollywood gossip might have temporarily tainted Cooper’s public persona, his films persistently reinforced the idea that his body was something that could be coveted and purchased freely.

An early sequence in Bluebeard’s Eighths Wife that demonstrates the switching of gender roles in The Taming of the Shrew can be seen when Michael, while struggling to sleep due to sexual frustration, buys a collection of classic novels and plays recommended by Nicole. Michael sifts through the pile of books, disregarding the bulkier texts for the very thin copy of Shakespeare’s comedy. Briefly reading the play, he stands up and marches to Nicole’s room with newfound confidence (Fig. 27). In the corridor, he joyfully smashes a vase on the ground. Barging into Nicole’s room, he silently walks over and slaps her face. She instantly slaps him back. The stunned and confused Michael returns to his room, where he double-checks something in the play. Repeating whatever he read in his head, he storms back out of his room to Nicole. This time, he pauses by the door with a wide, unnerving grin. Nicole drops her jaw, disturbed and confused. Michael then moves toward her, playfully tickling her chin before sitting down. His grin then turns to a menacing smirk as he pulls her over his lap and proclaims without any explanation: “Shakespeare!” as he proceeds to spank her (Figs. 28 & 29). The camera fades back to his room as Michael returns disappointed and dishevelled, violently throwing the play into the fire. He then sulks on the sofa, his head leaning on his fist. Nicole confidently enters the room, holding a cotton stick and bottle of iodine. Sitting beside him, she asks in a motherly and authoritative way: “Where is it?” Still acting like the sulking little boy, Michael pulls his trouser leg to reveal a bite mark on his knee (Fig. 30). Personifying motherhood, Nicole tuts and asks:

Nicole: (as she applies the ointment to the wound) Hurt?

Michael: (smiling) No. This is awfully nice of you, Nicole.

Nicole: Oh no, I always put iodine on people when I bite them.

Michael: Oh, your bark’s worse than your bite. (Wincing) No, it isn’t!

The humour in this scene is twofold. First, it parodies The Taming of the Shrew by subverting Michael’s attempts at “taming” Nicole. He emerges from the encounter worse off and is further tamed or pacified by Nicole’s retaliation. After all, Nicole is not an Elizabethan heroine but a modern woman with modern values and confidence to match. Secondly, Nicole’s retaliation mocks the cinematic trope of a man slapping his female lover to calm and seduce her. By slapping Michael in the face and biting his knee, she flips the gender and power dynamic, making him a sulky, passive schoolboy. As Michael pulls Nicole over his lap, the film cuts to a close-up of Cooper and thus obscures Colbert’s body while he spanks her. Although this could be partly attributed to censorship (a full shot of a grown man spanking a woman might have unnerved Production Code’s values), the scene’s editing also denies the audience the possibility of sexualising Nicole in this sequence.

With the revelation that Nicole has bitten Michael, the editing emphasises the film’s refusal to allow him the position of the traditional masculine lead. The scene further feminises him as his violent actions toward Nicole hurt her neither physically nor emotionally. Michael suddenly switches from a sulky schoolboy to a cheerful suitor as Nicole applies iodine to his knee. The suggestion is that even the slightest physical interaction with Nicole, even if it may be her tending to a wound she has created, causes Michael to become affectionate, even aroused. This moment in the film indicates the extent to which she has physically and sexually barred him.

The film continually forces Michael into scenarios traditionally occupied by women. During the onion scene, he attempts to get Nicole drunk and woo her into his bed; he plays the piano and sings to her as a method of seduction (Fig. 31). This sequence is partly used for comic effect due to Cooper’s reputation for not being musically gifted: on radio and later television comedy shows, such as Jack Benny and Bob Hope, Cooper was often required to sing, creating humour due to his lack of timing and being out of tune (usually flat). This scene also plays with the trope of a female love interest singing to woo her man. Traditionally, when a male lead sings, it entices the love interest to fall in love and marry him, such as in the sequence in Along Came Jones in which Melody (Cooper) sings out of tune to Cherry (Loretta Young). In Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, it is used as a failed attempt to persuade a woman to sleep with her husband. The jokey and unromantic tone of Michael’s song reinforces the parodying of this cinematic trope while also emphasising how out of his depth he is at being a passive husband.

The most explicit moment in the dialogue exposes the gender and sexual politics the film seeks to mock. Michael speaks as though Nicole is an investment, likening his attempts to have sex with her to his business fight with “Canadian Tin.” He demands that she “fulfills” her contract with him. Nevertheless, due to Nicole’s refusal to go to bed with him and his passivity in their relationship, Michael is destined to have a sexless marriage or an expensive divorce. Whereas in previous marriages, he has been in control, determining when and where to end the marriage and on what terms, Nicole has turned his perception of marriage and sex upside down, using his business-focused ideals and sexual desire against him. The film is faithful to its mockery of Michael’s values when the financially independent Nicole informs him that they are to be married and when she instigates their lovemaking. He remains, until the very end, a passive and tamed character.

Whereas Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Love in the Afternoon involve Cooper playing worldly, rich, and sexually driven men whose values are thrown back in their faces, Ball of Fire explores a very different dynamic. It is a gender-flipped modernisation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in which the seven dwarfs are a group of childlike, aging academics, and Snow White is Cooper’s innocent, virginal Professor Potts. He is awoken not by a dashing Prince but by the kiss of an independent and vivacious showgirl. Whereas Snow White’s seven dwarfs are individually distinct due to their specific personality traits, being grumpy or sleepy, Potts’s seven companions are distinct partly due to their specific academic fields.

Having spent eight years in a bubble, neither Potts nor his colleagues can understand the world they are hiding from. When the garbage man starts speaking in thick New York slang, the professors respond as though he is talking like an alien. Potts and his professors are depicted as if they are schoolboys from the turn of the century who have been left to grow old away from mainstream culture.

Potts’s role in the narrative as the virgin hero who is sexually awoken is emphasised through various visual details and dialogue, some already discussed. As one example, in the scene when he decides to go out into the world and research contemporary slang, he informs his housekeeper to put his lunch sandwich in the pocket of his mackintosh and that he will not be back before 9 p.m. Like a schoolboy going off on a field trip, Potts depends on his mother figure to feed and clothe him. His innocence about the world is perfectly indicated by his assumption that 9 p.m. is both significantly late and that he is unaware that 9 p.m. is exceedingly early in the nightclub and theatrical scenes. When Potts is first seen at Sugarpuss’s club, we can see a glass of cold milk on his table, which suggests his childishness. The film’s first ten minutes effectively present to the audience the sheltered existence of Potts and establish the awkward virginal persona that will soon be challenged through his interactions with Sugarpuss.

Sugarpuss is a masculine figure because she comes from and is comfortable in a male-dominated world. She is not a showgirl who dances on a chorus line, but the lead singer of an otherwise entirely male band. In her private life, her relationship with Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews) surrounds her with rough gangsters who speak the same language as her. She can be herself and speak for herself around dangerous thugs, never hinting at any fear or intimidation. Potts must discover his masculinity, not to save Sugarpuss but to win her over. He is the one who requires a transformation in this film, like Snow White, by which he might re-enter the “real” world. The first step that allows him to cope outside the walls of his study is her kiss, which serves to awaken his dormant sexuality. Before he meets Sugarpuss, Potts’s existence is overtly feminised and dependent on female support, as indicated by Miss Totten funding his work and Miss Bragg clothing and feeding him. By rejecting Mrs Bragg’s motherly care and Miss Totten’s financial support, Potts rids himself of the matriarchal world that he has lived in for so long and enters Sugarpuss’s masculine milieu.

While Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire are lighthearted comedies about sexual relations, Love in the Afternoon remains a complicated and sometimes uncomfortable film that has attracted little praise or critical attention aside from Throne’s article. It is less a gender-flipping than a grim critique of the realities of power, sex, and age. Throne argues that the film became something entirely different from Wilder’s original intention, predominantly due to the character of Frank. Frank is a man who can forget the name of the woman who tried to kill herself after he ended their relationship (Throne, 1988: 69), and a man who quickly forgets the face of the nineteen-year-old girl (Ariane) whom he seduced into his bed a year before. He is a middle-aged man who unknowingly seduces a much younger girl away from her age-appropriate boyfriend without any offer of stability or marriage. The presence of lines that were clearly shoehorned into the movie in post-production, such as “I didn’t even get to first base with her,” and the ending narration (in the American version) that informs the audience that Frank and Ariane married, seem to be belated attempts to appease the American censors and more conservative viewers. The original script ends with Frank embracing Ariane on the train: their relationship is rekindled without any suggestion of a happy ending or marriage (Wilder and Diamond, 1957: 156).

Aside from these few lines, the film suggests that Frank and Ariane spend their afternoons together having sex. For a man who appears so allergic to commitment and love, it would be naïve to think the two spend their afternoons merely drinking domestic champagne and listening to music. Wilder uses the climax of the song “Fascination” (Fermo Dante Marchetti) to indicate the end of the seduction and the unseen move into the bedroom. Ariane’s hesitation, even embarrassment, at walking into Frank’s bedroom emphasises the predetermined use of that space. Frank’s bedroom is the only space in the three films that clearly indicates the act of sex. It represents a foregone conclusion, the space in which all of Frank’s conquests will ultimately climax. Ariane’s hesitation in entering that space demonstrates how crudely predictable Frank’s seductions are, suggesting that the bedroom is innately his domain.

The sequence in which Frank first seduces Ariane is one of their many encounters in the afternoon and acts as a harsh reminder of what kind of man Frank is. In this scene, the hotel suite is well-lit by the sun peeking through the large balcony doors. At first, Ariane is determined that her visit will only be fleeting so that she may drop off Madam X’s hat and make her excuses. Throughout this scene, and most scenes between the two, Frank and Ariane play a sort of cat-and-mouse game. In their encounter the previous night, Frank pursues Ariane, tracking her around the table as she attempts her escape. The dynamic is far more complex in the broad light of day as Ariane is now armored with her in-depth knowledge of Frank’s previous sexual encounters. When Ariane intrigues Frank with her sexually liberal values, he moves in closer. When she details his sexual activity, describing how she has been “reading up” on him, Frank quickly retreats away from her. Despite the few heavy-handed additions to the dialogue in post-production, Love in the Afternoon is fundamentally a film about sex. It exposes the hypocrisy of a male-dominated world’s view of sexual relations by stripping down the power dynamic between men and women and turning the narrative on its head. Unlike Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Frank experiences frustration and an eventual transformation caused not by Ariane refusing sex but by her suggesting that he does not have exclusive “use” of her, emphasised later when Claude alludes to her adoption of a false and extensive sexual history in an attempt to become Frank’s equal and hide her emotional vulnerability from him.

Although it is arguably the least “feminised” role in the films I have examined, Cooper’s role is still flipped on its head through his female counterpart’s suggestive sexual independence from him. The comedy and tension of the film are not caused by the playboy’s inability to remain faithful but by his young lover’s refusal to remain passive in their relationship. Ariane’s treatment shakes Frank to the core and transforms him into a cuckolded husband. His transition is completed by his visit to a Turkish bath and Claude’s office, both of which echo Monsieur X at the beginning of the film. Without getting engaged or even discussing marriage, Ariane turns the hedonistic bachelor into a jealous husband whose rage and insecurity are not directed at a flesh-and-blood lover but at a series of semi-fictional men plucked from her father’s past cases. Ariane is able to transform Frank without sleeping with a single man. In many respects, her emasculation of Frank is far more humiliating because of the quasi-fictional nature of her lovers. Once again, this reinforces the idea that Love in the Afternoon is not a film about female sexuality but men’s attitudes and hypocrisy around their own sexuality.

Ariane’s transformation of Frank is not achieved merely through her supposed sexual promiscuity. Throughout the film, she continually mimics Frank and his philosophy in numerous ways, and in so doing, almost mirrors or creates the illusion of embodying his lifestyle, morality, and behaviour. For example, when she first returns to his hotel suite in the afternoon, Frank casually sits on a chair, speaking into a microphone. He is giving instructions to his secretary in America., one of which is to tell her to contact all of his sexual partners (including someone’s wife) so that they will clear their schedule for him on his return. He lists the various women in the same tone and breath that he has just dictated business decisions, such as approving the slogan “Pop-in for a Pepsi” for the UK market (Fig. 32). Later in the film, Ariane uses the same tape recorder to dictate her list of former lovers. She delivers it formally as if she is writing a letter on behalf of a bank: “Dear Mr. Flannagan, in reply to your inquiry as to the number of men in my life, here’s an itemised list.” This has the effect of both playing him at his own game and mocking his attitude toward women (Fig. 33). Ariane and the film both subvert the playboy lifestyle commonly romanticised in film. This also parallels the businesslike rhetoric during Michael and Nicole’s argument, suggesting that both films seek to mock male sexuality by comparing it to the character’s work.

Although Frank gradually becomes the passive prey in the couple’s sexual dynamic, he is generally in control during their first afternoon together. We see the gypsy musicians arrive and watch as the two dance a similarly intimate dance to the one Ariane interrupted the night before (Figs. 34, 35 & 36). As they move toward the balcony door, Frank and Ariane stand on either side of the entrance. With her back to the open door, we see her face and his reflections in the glass beside her head. Throne suggests that Frank’s reflection in the film represents his shallowness, as his shadow often appears at moments when he is being most despicable (Throne, 1988: 69). Whereas Michael’s reflection demonstrates his need to be seen sexually, Frank’s presence in mirrors and windows highlights his duality: a man who deep down has little for women to desire. The instance at the window occurs when Ariane casually confronts Frank about a former lover of his who tried to kill herself, reinforcing what kind of man he is (Fig. 37). At first, he does not recognise the woman’s name, emphasizing his lack of emotional attachment to his past and present conquests. This exchange exposes the man Ariane is seduced by and the young woman he is seducing. When Frank asks her about the first man she loves, she cannot answer. With his reflection visible, the exchange highlights a duality in his nature: he is a man who is a master of seduction, avoids falling in love, and knows how to tactically control his prey. It is hard to believe that he did not at least suspect that Ariane’s inability to answer him was due to her virginity and lack of experience. Instead of retreating from another possible ugly love affair, Frank moves in on Ariane, his body almost completely blocking her from view as he kisses her (Fig. 38). We briefly hear the song “Fascination” and then cut to the corridor. A few moments later, the music stops and the musicians leave the hotel suite. The suggestion that the two have sex is underlined in their next appearance. The afternoon has turned to evening, and Frank is informed that his car is ready to take him to the airport. As he tries to guess Ariane’s name, we see the anonymous girl fixing her hair in his bathroom, making herself presentable before returning home to her father.

It is understandable why many people find Love in the Afternoon challenging to watch, but it could be argued that this is one of its strengths. Unlike Michael in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife or Potts in Ball of Fire, Frank has neither innocence nor youth as an excuse for his actions. Deep down, he is a man who probably knows what he does to the women he seduces and the public humiliation and shame he causes in their lives. Even when one of his lovers attempts suicide, his shallow and selfish approach to the world does not change: it is not his fault for seducing and bedding them, it is their fault for being so foolish that they fall in love or get caught. Only after Ariane torments him with her fictional lovers does he experience what he has put so many others through. The anxiety from the long year she spent waiting and thinking about him is paralleled in Frank’s night of hell in which he listens to her list of lovers/suitors repeatedly.

On learning that there are no other men in her life but him, Frank quickly slips back into his old ways and jokes about what a fun girl she is. However, much like Ariane’s father, the film denies him a guiltless resolution. With the revelation to Frank that Ariane is Claude’s daughter, Frank is confronted with the decision he made a year before by the balcony of his hotel suite. Throne suggests that Claude’s quiet but blunt confrontation with Frank highlights the unspoken rules of a male-dominated society: “Where daughters and wives are supposed to remain innocent, hedonists somehow overlook the fact that their lovers are someone’s daughter” (Throne, 1988: 72). The duality of Frank is shattered: he has simultaneously demanded that Ariane be sexually liberal enough to be seduced without the expectation of marriage while remaining sexually pure outside his bedroom. She must be both virginal and promiscuous, and he must know everything about her to control her, but not enough to be confronted with too much truth. By being confronted in broad daylight by a man of a similar age to himself, Frank’s final interaction with Claude shatters the romantic version of himself.

The final sequence in which Ariane accompanies Frank to his train resembles his last moments with her father in which both men’s age and culpability are exhibited through harsh and unforgiving lighting: he is well-lit, revealing a tired and anxious face that cannot make eye contact due to his newly developed sense of guilt and self-loathing. Cooper’s expression during this scene contributes to the audience’s sense of uneasiness when he finally does run off with her. We are forced to ask whether he is motivated merely by guilt alone (Figs. 39, 40 & 41).

CONCLUSION

Love in the Afternoon is a provocative film that explores the character of Frank, laying bare his shallowness and faults. While Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire continue to represent their female leads as active, strong women, the final decision of Love in the Afternoon rests with Frank. He can either leave Ariane having taken her virginity or take her with him and commit to a life he has avoided for years. Although Ariane transforms Frank, cuckolding him through fictional men, the film refuses to transfer power from him to her completely. This is perhaps why the film remains difficult for some people to watch and why it, of these three films, remains notably neglected and disliked. The sexual politics of the bedroom must remain in his control, despite his transformation. This offers a clear contrast to Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife and Ball of Fire, where the transformation is absolute. Both Nicole and Sugarpuss are victorious in the politics of the bedroom. However, each film transforms and challenges Cooper’s characters and their masculinity in various ways. Arguably, Cooper’s performance, the narratives, and the feminisation or emasculation of his body enable these transformations to be so successful.

My study of the three Cooper-Wilder films has built on Brown’s work and attempted to explore the complex star persona of one of Hollywood’s foremost actors. Even toward the end of his life, in films like Love in the Afternoon, the sexualisation and feminisation of Cooper’s body and persona force the audience to confront the gaze. This confrontation highlights, for contemporary audiences, the sexualisation of an aging body. With the benefit of hindsight, the objectification and sexualisation of Cooper during the late ’50s offer a morbid element: a realisation that we have been gazing at the body of a man who is fast approaching death.

The star persona of Gary Cooper remains one of the most fascinating enigmas in early twentieth-century Hollywood cinema. While I have referenced and studied various films in this article, there are still many other films to discuss and understand about both the man and the image of the man. I believe it is safe to say that as society’s perception of gender and sexuality evolves, so will our reading of one of the greatest actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Wilder, Billy & Diamond, I.A.L. (1957) Love in the Afternoon [script].

“Along Came Jones” [Advert] Photoplay, (July 1945) p. 13.

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Brown, Jeffrey A. (1995). “‘Putting on the Ritz”: Masculinity and the Young Gary Cooper.” Screen Volume, 36:3, pp. 193-213.

Carter, Matthew (2018). Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood’s Frontier Narrative. Edinburgh University Press.

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McCormick, Richard W. (2020). Sex, Politics, and Comedy: The Transnational Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch. Indiana State Press.

Phillips, Gene D. (2010). Some Like It Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. University Press of Kentucky.

Pippin, Robert B. (2010). Hollywood Westerns and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy. Yale University Press.

Tasker, Yvonne, (1993). Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema. Routledge.

Thomas, Deborah (1996). “John Wayne’s Body.” The Movie Book of the Western, eds. Cameron, Ian & Pye, Douglas. Studio Vista, pp. 75-86.

Throne, Marylin (1988). “‘Love in the Afternoon’: A Cinematic Exposure of a 1950s Myth.” Literature Film Quarterly, 16:1, pp. 65-73.

Tole, George (2003). “Believing in Gary Cooper.” Criticism, 45:1, pp. 31-52.