Leave Gary Cooper Alone!

If you are used to reading celebrity journalism, you no doubt are familiar with the type of story in which the topic is whether or not a given celebrity has had plastic surgery or not. Did he/she really have it? Was the work done well? Which of the world's best plastic surgeons performed it? Is the celebrity overdoing it? Did he or she really need it in the first place?

Lest anyone think any of this is even slightly new, we stumbled across an item recently that showed us, when it comes to journalism and celebrity's privacy, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We recently stumbled across a post by Los Angeles Times blogger Larry Harnisch. The subject: the front page picture and news story from the long defunct Los Angeles Mirror newspaper from May 1, 1958. The topic was, yes, a very big star's plastic surgery. In this case it was legendary movie star Gary Cooper, of such classics as "High Noon," "Sergeant York," and "Mr. Deeds Comes to Town," whose face had been worked on by one of Hollywood's top plastic surgeons. It was, perhaps, more shocking to some people as Cooper was a Hollywood "man's man" second only to John Wayne when it came to his public image, and it was hard to imagine Will Kane, Alvin York, or Longfellow Deeds having work performed. What the public didn't realize was that the real Gary Cooper was a bit more of a sophisticate than most of his characters.

We suppose curiosity about these matters is only human but, when it comes right down to it, is it really anyone's business? And does anyone really have a reason to criticize an actor for doing it in the first place? After all, the reason actors turn to the finest board certified plastic surgeons they can possibly find is not just that they'd like to look good (who wouldn't?). Looking good is  also part of their job, especially if they want to delay the inevitable shift from leading man to character actor.

In the case of Mr. Cooper -- "Coop" to his friends -- he had been (fictitiously) romancing the very young and even younger looking Audrey Hepburn the year before in Billy Wilder's "Love in the Afternoon" and the nearly 30 year age difference between the stars was a topic of some discussion. You can criticize the casting of a much older man in a movie romance with a 20-something actress, but can you really blame Gary Cooper for wanting to look as not-old as possible while doing so? Especially when his older pictures were constantly playing on television, reminding people how splendidly handsome he was in his youth when he was romancing more appropriately aged actresses"?

Yet people had strong opinions, voiced repeatedly, on this matter then, and they keep doing it now. We suppose it's kind of fun to have strong opinions on this, but we'll never understand the people who seem offended by the whole idea of cosmetic procedures and keep saying so, over and over and very loudly. Ultimately, is a plastic surgery really anyone's business other than the doctor and the (consenting adult) patient?