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No one before or since, epitomizes elegance and style like the legendary Gary Cooper. No, Cary Grant doesn’t even come close. He was a fashion protege of Gary Cooper without a doubt– even Grant’s stage name was crafted by movie studio executives to look and sound like Cooper’s.
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No one has ever worn an ascot as well as Gary Cooper– a look that truly requires sartorial swagger and a deft hand. Cooper was always in command of his clothing– never the other way around.
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Gary Cooper had a very discerning eye for fabric, fit and make. Early on he was a regular customer of Anderson & Sheppard on London’s Savile Row. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood became enamored with Italy. Roman tailors Brioni, Carlo Palazi and Bruno de Angelis flourished– dressing Gary Cooper and his peers– Henry Fonda, Clark Gable and Tyrone Power.
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“Dad was a true Westerner, and I take after him”, Gary Cooper told people who wanted to know more about his life before Hollywood. Dad was Charles Henry Cooper, who left his native England at 19, became a lawyer and later a Montana State Supreme Court justice. In 1906, when Gary was 5, his dad bought the Seven-Bar-Nine, a 600-acre ranch that had originally been a land grant to the builders of the railroad through that part of Montana.
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Gary Cooper’s personal style evolved over the years as his sartorial and cowboy sensibilities blended more and more. The result was an elegant eclecticism, that was truly reflective of his personality and lifestyle.
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Gary Cooper traveled in interesting circles outside of Hollywood. Notable friends included — Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and of course — Ernest Hemingway.
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Cooper starred in several films based on fellow icon Hemingway’s classic works — A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway was a difficult man to get close to, but he and Cooper had a very close and legendary friendship of 20 years. They both loved the outdoors and rugged adventures, particularly shooting.
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Sadly, it all ended when Gary Cooper passed away in 1961 after a painful and private bout with cancer– Ernest Hemingway tragically took his own life just seven weeks later.
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The Selvedge Yard 
What a surprise. Three of my boyhood heroes (Hemingway, Cooper, Hawks) and the women who kept up with them each step of the way. Touchstones and “role models” for the ideal male. They are elegant without being effete, masculine without being “macho.” Should be more widely seen.
Masculinity is true manliness. Macho is braggadocio and hype, muscle without mind.
It’s easy to forget what a good actor Cooper could actually be until you see one of his better performances, like “The Westerner” opposite Walter Brennan as Judge Roy Bean. I think Cary Grant was an even better one, though, and after “The Awful Truth,” Cooper abruptly stopped playing sophisticated fast-talking drawing rooms comedies and went strictly with the “aw shucks” type of role so as not to compete with Grant on that turf. You’re exactly right about Cary Grant being sort of convolutedly named after Gary Cooper, and everyone during that period had to make do with Cooper’s castoff roles at the beginning of the ’30s. Had Cooper accepted Raoul Walsh’s classic widescreen 1930 movie “The Big Trail,” Walsh would never have discovered the 23-year-old prop boy, renamed him, and cast him as the lead in one of the greatest of all westerns (like much of Walsh’s life, all co-opted by John Ford in later interviews, who pretended to reporters that he’d found Wayne instead–Ford often imitated Walsh, who’d led the kind of life Ford had wished he’d had himself before going into movies).