Before he was the strong, silent type audiences fell for again and again, Gary Cooper was just an actor trying to survive a Paramount location shoot in the Arizona desert.
In 1939, Cooper headed to Buttercup Valley near Yuma, Arizona, to film Beau Geste — the classic Foreign Legion adventure that put him, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston in French military wool under a desert sun that didn’t care about anyone’s shooting schedule.
The production built an entire fake desert outpost on site, tents and all, and the heat turned out to be a bigger villain than anything in the script. Several cast and crew members were hospitalized before filming wrapped, and the crew reportedly had to bring in tractors just to keep the sand dunes looking right for the cameras after the wind kept rearranging them overnight.
Confidence: Well-documented — corroborated across multiple accounts, including a Wellman biography and contemporaneous production notes.
Cooper came out of it with one of his most enduring roles — and a story about desert filmmaking in Arizona that, frankly, some of us don’t need to imagine too hard.
Like a good Hollywood story? There’s a lot more about Gary Cooper and 49 others and the stamps that honor them all, in my upcoming book. Enter your email and I’ll let you know the minute Hollywood’s Legendary Stars hits the shelves. [Notify Me]
