Event

DESIGN FOR LIVING

In Person: Maria Cooper Janis, Gary Cooper's Daughter
Archival 35mm Print! Film, Discussion, Book Signing
Thursday, February 2 at 7:30pm
Members $15 / Public $20 (Includes Reception)

"Dressed up like a million dollar trooper, Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper: Super-Duper!" - Irving Berlin, Putting on the Ritz
When Berlin wrote that famous line in 1946, he captured the way Gary Cooper embodied classic American masculine style. Cooper's unpretentious elegance is in full view in the 1933 comedy Design for Living. Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult "gentleman's agreement" in this pre-Code comedy, adapted by Ben Hecht from a play by Noël Coward and directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch. A risqué relationship story and a witty take on creative pursuits, the film concerns a commercial artist (Hopkins) unable or unwilling to choose between the equally dashing painter (Cooper) and playwright (March) she meets on a train. Design for Living is Lubitsch at his sexiest, an entertainment at once debonair and racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure. (USA, 1933, 91 min., b/w, 35mm courtesy of Universal Pictures)

The new book, Gary Cooper: Enduring Style, written by Maria Cooper-Janis and G. Bruce Boyer (who will also appear in person), is a beautiful appreciation of Gary Cooper's timeless elegance captured in never-before-seen personal photographs. Whether hunting with close friend Ernest Hemingway, lounging with Cary Grant, in the company of royalty or cowboys, this book reveals that Cooper had the perfect outfit for every occasion, embodying a type of refined masculinity rarely seen and in high demand to this day.

"Gary Cooper was not only the biggest star of his time, but also the definitive "American" movie star handsome, honorable, honest." Ralph Lauren, from his introduction to Gary Cooper: Enduring Style

Curated by Dr. Jud Newborn