October 17, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, from the time he was a boy, Merian C. Cooper wanted to be an adventurer, a wish that propelled him into journalism, the National Guard, military aviation, and two world wars. Amid these, he became a movie producer and writer, working on some cinematic classics, including King Kong in 1933. He even played one of the pilots in the film. Here again, to tell this "Hollywood Goes to War" story is Roger McGrath.
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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we're back with our American Stories. And here to
tell another Hollywood goes to War's story is Roger McGrath.
He's the author of Gunfighters, Hollyman, Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier.
He's also a US Marine and former history professor at UCLA.
Doctor McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries and
(00:32):
is a regular contributor for US. Here in our American Stories,
here's McGrath. Marian C.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Cooper was one of Hollywood's most important figures in its
Golden Age herose the great prominence in nineteen thirty three
when he co wrote, directed, and produced the blockbuster King Kong.
Before he retired, he had six credits for directing, nineteen
for writing, and sixty eight for producing. You worked closely
(01:02):
with John Ford, producing such Ford classics as Ford Apache,
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, wagon Master, a
Quiet Man, and the Searchers. What is generally not known
about Marion Cooper is his service as a US Army
(01:22):
pilot in World War One and then as the organizer
of the cosc Usco Squadron, a group of American pilots
who came to Poland's aid and flew with great distinction
in the Polish Russian War of nineteen twenty. Marion Cooper
is born in eighteen ninety three in Jacksonville, Florida, the
(01:44):
son of a prominent attorney Cooper Lyn goes back to
the colonial era in southeastern Georgia, rising of prominence during
the Revolutionary War. Is John Cooper, Marion's great grandfather, who
serves as a colonel alongside Kasmir Pulaski, the Polish cavalry commander.
(02:09):
After a meeting with Ben Franklin in Paris in seventeen
seventy six, Pulaski sails to America and is soon reorganizing
and commanding the Continental Army's cavalry regiments. Though his imperious
manner causes controversy, the aristocratic Pulaski serves with distinction in
(02:29):
several battles, both before and after, spending the winner of
seventeen seventy seven to seventeen seventy eight with Washington at
Valley Forge. While leading a charge during the Battle of
Savannah in May seventeen seventy nine, Pulaski is grievously wounded
by British grape shot. Colonel John Cooper carries Pulaski from
(02:54):
the battlefield, and, according to family lore, is at Pulaski's
side when the cavalre commander dies two days later. Kasmir
Pulaski becomes a hero to Americans, including Mirian Cooper, when,
as a young boy, his told stories of his great
great grandfather and the Polish general. The young boy's imagination
(03:19):
is also fired by hearing of the exploits of his
great uncle, Mirian R. Cooper, who joins the second Florida
Infantry of the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen, fights, heroically,
suffers several wounds, and is commissioned as a captain at
age twenty. Moreover, the young Cooper is a voracious reader
(03:42):
of tales of adventure, in particular Paul du Shahalouse Explorations
and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, a thrilling account of Shalloo's
hunt for gorillas in the forests of the uncharted Crystal Mountains.
Shalloo's description of two native women being carried off by
(04:03):
girls leaves a lasting impression on Cooper. It isn't by
accident that nineteen thirty three, Cooper co writes, directs, and
produces King Kong, Cooper's thoughts of adventure turdans skyward when,
at age ten in nineteen three, the Florida Boy reads
of the Right brother's twelve second flight at Kittihawk, North Carolina.
(04:27):
He vows that one day he will fly your plans.
Upon graduating from the Lawrenceville Prep School in New Jersey,
Cooper receives an appointment to the United States Naval Academy.
He performs well both academically and athletically, but Cooper has
trouble controlling his wild nature and receives the merits for
(04:50):
infractions of military discipline. His fondness for strong drink gets
him thrown into the brig during December nineteen fourteen, and
the academy begins to dismissal proceedings. Cooper is only one
semester shy of graduation, and he can contest the proceedings,
(05:12):
but he feels he has brought dishonor upon himself and
his family, and thinks it best for all if he leaves.
Too embarrassed to return home, Cooper sails to Europe as
a seaman aboard a freighter. He thinks of enlistening to
fly for Britain or France, but passport problems interfere. He
(05:34):
returns to the United States and works at various jobs,
including writing for the Minneapolis Daily News in the Saint
Louis Post Dispatch. He stops drinking entirely and excels at
his jobs, but he does begin smoking a pipe. In
a letter to his father, he says of his pipe,
(05:55):
he soothes many, many a hatred and many a regret.
Whenever I have wanted a good stiff drink, the old
Corn Cob has always stuck by me and taken the
place of John Barleycorn. In nineteen sixteen, Cooper joins the
Georgia National Guard and quickly finds himself on the Mexican
(06:16):
border with General George black Jack Pershing. Cooper thinks he
will soon be pursuing Pancho Villa deep inside Mexico, but
his duties are confined to patrolling the border. After several
months and unlimited action, Cooper gets orders to the Military
Aeronautics School in Atlanta. After a year of rigorous training,
(06:39):
Cooper graduates first in his class of one hundred and
fifty cadets. The commandant of the school sends a telegram
to Washington recommending the newly minted pilot Miriam Cooper for
service Overseas, saying he is the best man in every
respect who has yet entered this school. Lieutenant Cooper is
(07:04):
in France by October nineteen seventeen, but is in for
several more months of training before being assigned to the
twentieth Auosquadron. Injuries in a crash landing in months of
heavy rains and fog delay Cooper's first combat flights until
September nineteen eighteen, which occurred during the Battle of San Miel.
(07:30):
Cooper's flying the Deavelain IV Liberty a powerful and fairly
maneuverrable plane, but when loaded with a pilot, a Bamaedeer ordnance,
and a full tank of gas, it is considerably slower
than the German Fokker D seven. Moreover, the Liberty's gas
tank is particularly vulnerable the enemy fire, which earns the
(07:53):
plane the nickname Flaming Coffin. Lieutenant Cooper flies both bombing
and reconnaissance missions. His luck holds until a bombing mission
in late September during the Meuse Argonne offensive. His flight
of Davlins is jumped by two groups of fowkers. Cooper
(08:15):
maneuvers is playing brilliantly, and he and his bombiter in Leonard,
shoot down three Fockers before his own plane is riddled
with bullets and set of blaze. Cooper thinks of bailing out,
but he decides to stick with the plane because Leonard
is wounded and only semi conscious in the rear seat.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And you've been listening to the story of Mary and C. Cooper,
and he's the man who gave us King Kong. And
that's in nineteen thirty three. When people saw this movie,
they ran out of the theater. You can still watch
it today and it's still a remarkable piece of cinema.
And also my goodness producing the classic John Ford movies
like The Searchers or A Quiet Man or Rio Grand
(08:57):
Always in the lineage of this family, there was war
in service. When we come back more of Marian C.
Cooper's story, it's a stem winder here an our American story,
(09:39):
and we continue with our American stories. Marion Cooper's airplane
is on fire after getting riddled with bullets and a
dogfight against two German planes in World War One. He
thinks of bailing out, but decides to stick with the
plane because his bombadier ed Leonard is wounded and only
semi conscious in the rear seat. Let's return to Roger McGrath.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
With badly burned hands and using only his elbows and
knees to control the stick, Cooper crash lands the plane
in a field. By the time Cooper and Leonard extract
themselves from the wreckage, a German pilot who is one
of those in the air duel, also lands in the field.
As described by Cooper, the handsome and middle bedecked pilot
(10:29):
strides over to the wounded Americans, salutes them and renders aid.
German infantry soon arrive and Cooper and Leonard are taken
to a German field hospital for treatment. German doctors save
Cooper's hands in Leonard's life. Cooper and Leonard are listed
as MIA until the Red Cross sends word early in
(10:53):
November that they are alive and recovering from their wounds
in a German hospital. The armises is signed a week
later and Cooper enlighted, are soon repatriated. Once back in
France and now a captain, Cooper volunteers for a humanitarian
mission to Poland. The Poles are starving. Their condition made
(11:16):
even worse by a Russian Bolshevik invasion. World War One
may be over, but the Polish Russian War is just beginning.
Cooper's organization of truck convoys with tons of food and
medical supplies endears him to the Poles, especially in East Galatia,
(11:38):
now part of Ukraine. However, he longs to join the
Polls in fighting the Russian Bolsheviks, who are able to
send more than seven hundred thousand troops into Poland. After
defeating their white Russian foes, Cooper personally contacts Poland's Head
of State, Marshall Joseph Pulutsky, asking permission to organize a
(12:03):
squadron of American pilots to fight alongside the Polls and
repay the American debt oude to Poland for the services
of Kashmir Pulaski and Tadou's Koskiusko, another Polish nobleman who
served in the Continental Army with distinction. With Marshall Polutsky's approval,
(12:26):
Cooper begins recruiting American pilots. The first to join is
Colonel Cedric Errol Fauntleroy, a tall Mississippian who flew in
Eddie Rickerbocker's famed Squadron. Cooper wants a squadron named in
the honor of Pulavski, but font Leroy wants Koskiusko. Since
(12:46):
Fount Lrooy is the ranking officer, the unit becomes the
Cosciusko Squadron. In addition to Captain Cooper and Colonel Fontleroy,
the founding members of the squadron include Captain A. H.
Kelly of Virginia, Captain Ed Corsi of New York, Lieutenants
(13:08):
Ed Noble and EP Graves of Massachusetts, Lieutenant GARL. Clark
of Oklahoma, Lieutenant Ken shrewsbar Virginia, Lieutenant Elliott Chess of Texas,
and Lieutenant George Crawford of Delaware. Certainly across section of America.
Many more American volunteers will later join the squadron. By
(13:32):
January nineteen twenty, the squadron is in action, contributing significantly
to turning the tide of battle against the Russians. Captain
Cooper's in combat whenever weather permits, often flying low altitude
missions against the Cossack cavalry, which is attempting to sweep
through eastern Poland and into Warsaw. The American pilots employ
(13:55):
tactics they learned in the World War One battles of
San miel And are Gone. First, they would fly over
the Cossack columns at six hundred feet above the ground
and drop their bombs by hand. Then they would dive
down to only a few dozen feet above the ground
and fire their machine guns at the now fleeing Cossacks.
(14:17):
These bombing and strafing attacks are devastating to the Cossack cavalry,
but also take a toll on American pilots. Flying at
such low altitudes, particularly on the strafing runs, means small
arms can bring down a plane. Cooper also flies several
missions to Kiev, where he has a beautiful Polish girlfriend.
(14:40):
He later recalled the day I flew down the street
in Kiev with a wing almost shot off so I
could wave to my beautiful, luscious blonde and have her
blow a kiss at me. And if that wasn't worth
risking your life for, I don't know what is, particularly
as I had a date with that night. On July thirteenth,
(15:04):
Cooper is strafing Cossack cavalry when bullets ripped through his
gas tank and his engine begins to sputter. He switches
towards the reserve tank, but no luck. As his plane
is gliding to the earth, he watches Cossacks galloping their
horses to catch up with him. His dead stick landing
(15:25):
is smooth, but then his wheels hit a ditch and
the plain ground loops. Cooper is thrown out of the
cockpit and hits the ground with a thud. He struggles
to his feet, walks a few steps, then passes out.
Cooper regains consciousness with the help of a kick from
the boot of a dismounted Cossack. Cooper sees he's surrounded
(15:48):
by the notorious rushing cavalry thet Cooper later says they
look like wild dogs jumping after a piece of raw meat.
He endures three days of beatings and whippings before arriving
at the headquarters of the Cossack cavalry commander General Simeon Boudini.
Cooper thinks he will be interrogated and executed, but a
(16:12):
surprise to learn Boudini has a fondness for the Kosciusko pilots.
A few weeks earlier, the pilots could have killed Boudini
while he was riding in the train. However, the Americans
saw his wife was with him, and is sited to
fly by without attacking. Boudini offers Cooper a job as
(16:34):
a fine instructor for the Bolsheviks, but Cooper will have
none of it and is sent to a prison near Moscow.
Malnutrition and disease take the lives of prisoners week by week,
and for various reasons. Prisoners are occasionally lined up against
a wall and shot. Cooper is chosen for the wall
(16:55):
three times, but each time his execution is called off.
During the spring of nineteen twenty one, he and two
of his fellow prisoners, both Polish lieutenants, swear an oath
to each other that they will attempt to escape or
die trying. Days later, when they were among a group
(17:16):
of prisoners taken into a forest to chop wood, Cooper
and the Polish officers slip away, moving rapidly through the forest,
and they have the good fortune to come upon a
rail line and leap unseen aboard a freight train headed west.
The train takes them much of the way to the
Latvian border, but then its travel on foot only by
(17:40):
night and only off the beaten path. At one point,
Cooper has to cut the throat of a Russian soldier
on patrol. When Cooper reaches Warsaw, he is greeted as
a conquering hero. Cooper says all the Coscuesco Squadron did
was nothing more than payback for the contributions of Pulaski
(18:02):
and Kosciusko to America's freedom in the American Revolution. Once
back in the United States, Cooper goes to work as
a reporter for the New York Times. After six months, though,
he is able to join an expedition led by a
wealthy explorer from California, Edward Salisbury, that is sailing to
(18:25):
far off places in search of adventure. This is something
Cooper has dreamed of since he was a little kid.
The expedition takes Cooper to the most remote islands of
the Southwest Pacific and to those of the Indian Ocean,
islands of Head Honey, human sacrifice in cannibalism. Out of
(18:47):
the expedition comes hundreds of photographs and hundreds of feet
of film, which has turned into a documentary. Also coming
out of the expedition is a book, The See Gypsy,
written by Mirian Cooper. The documentary and the book tack
Salisbury and Cooper to Hollywood. Cooper is soon writing, directing,
(19:10):
or producing some of the best movies to ever come
out of Hollywood. People often say Hollywood doesn't make movies
like they used to. It may be because Hollywood doesn't
have men like Mirian Cooper anymore.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And a terrific job on the storytelling is always by
Greg Hangler and a special thanks to Roger McGrath. We
love the Hollywood Goes to War series and my goodness,
so many great men served when they didn't have to.
There were many other ways they could have gone about
helping the effort, war bonds and the like, people like
(19:50):
John Ford, Frank Capper, John Houston, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable,
Gable at the height of his career, doing this over
and over again. The story of Mary Cooper here on
our American Story
Speaker 2 (20:17):
M
And we're back with our American Stories. And here to
tell another Hollywood goes to War's story is Roger McGrath.
He's the author of Gunfighters, Hollyman, Vigilantes, Violence on the Frontier.
He's also a US Marine and former history professor at UCLA.
Doctor McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries and
(00:32):
is a regular contributor for US. Here in our American Stories,
here's McGrath. Marian C.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Cooper was one of Hollywood's most important figures in its
Golden Age herose the great prominence in nineteen thirty three
when he co wrote, directed, and produced the blockbuster King Kong.
Before he retired, he had six credits for directing, nineteen
for writing, and sixty eight for producing. You worked closely
(01:02):
with John Ford, producing such Ford classics as Ford Apache,
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, wagon Master, a
Quiet Man, and the Searchers. What is generally not known
about Marion Cooper is his service as a US Army
(01:22):
pilot in World War One and then as the organizer
of the cosc Usco Squadron, a group of American pilots
who came to Poland's aid and flew with great distinction
in the Polish Russian War of nineteen twenty. Marion Cooper
is born in eighteen ninety three in Jacksonville, Florida, the
(01:44):
son of a prominent attorney Cooper Lyn goes back to
the colonial era in southeastern Georgia, rising of prominence during
the Revolutionary War. Is John Cooper, Marion's great grandfather, who
serves as a colonel alongside Kasmir Pulaski, the Polish cavalry commander.
(02:09):
After a meeting with Ben Franklin in Paris in seventeen
seventy six, Pulaski sails to America and is soon reorganizing
and commanding the Continental Army's cavalry regiments. Though his imperious
manner causes controversy, the aristocratic Pulaski serves with distinction in
(02:29):
several battles, both before and after, spending the winner of
seventeen seventy seven to seventeen seventy eight with Washington at
Valley Forge. While leading a charge during the Battle of
Savannah in May seventeen seventy nine, Pulaski is grievously wounded
by British grape shot. Colonel John Cooper carries Pulaski from
(02:54):
the battlefield, and, according to family lore, is at Pulaski's
side when the cavalre commander dies two days later. Kasmir
Pulaski becomes a hero to Americans, including Mirian Cooper, when,
as a young boy, his told stories of his great
great grandfather and the Polish general. The young boy's imagination
(03:19):
is also fired by hearing of the exploits of his
great uncle, Mirian R. Cooper, who joins the second Florida
Infantry of the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen, fights, heroically,
suffers several wounds, and is commissioned as a captain at
age twenty. Moreover, the young Cooper is a voracious reader
(03:42):
of tales of adventure, in particular Paul du Shahalouse Explorations
and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, a thrilling account of Shalloo's
hunt for gorillas in the forests of the uncharted Crystal Mountains.
Shalloo's description of two native women being carried off by
(04:03):
girls leaves a lasting impression on Cooper. It isn't by
accident that nineteen thirty three, Cooper co writes, directs, and
produces King Kong, Cooper's thoughts of adventure turdans skyward when,
at age ten in nineteen three, the Florida Boy reads
of the Right brother's twelve second flight at Kittihawk, North Carolina.
(04:27):
He vows that one day he will fly your plans.
Upon graduating from the Lawrenceville Prep School in New Jersey,
Cooper receives an appointment to the United States Naval Academy.
He performs well both academically and athletically, but Cooper has
trouble controlling his wild nature and receives the merits for
(04:50):
infractions of military discipline. His fondness for strong drink gets
him thrown into the brig during December nineteen fourteen, and
the academy begins to dismissal proceedings. Cooper is only one
semester shy of graduation, and he can contest the proceedings,
(05:12):
but he feels he has brought dishonor upon himself and
his family, and thinks it best for all if he leaves.
Too embarrassed to return home, Cooper sails to Europe as
a seaman aboard a freighter. He thinks of enlistening to
fly for Britain or France, but passport problems interfere. He
(05:34):
returns to the United States and works at various jobs,
including writing for the Minneapolis Daily News in the Saint
Louis Post Dispatch. He stops drinking entirely and excels at
his jobs, but he does begin smoking a pipe. In
a letter to his father, he says of his pipe,
(05:55):
he soothes many, many a hatred and many a regret.
Whenever I have wanted a good stiff drink, the old
Corn Cob has always stuck by me and taken the
place of John Barleycorn. In nineteen sixteen, Cooper joins the
Georgia National Guard and quickly finds himself on the Mexican
(06:16):
border with General George black Jack Pershing. Cooper thinks he
will soon be pursuing Pancho Villa deep inside Mexico, but
his duties are confined to patrolling the border. After several
months and unlimited action, Cooper gets orders to the Military
Aeronautics School in Atlanta. After a year of rigorous training,
(06:39):
Cooper graduates first in his class of one hundred and
fifty cadets. The commandant of the school sends a telegram
to Washington recommending the newly minted pilot Miriam Cooper for
service Overseas, saying he is the best man in every
respect who has yet entered this school. Lieutenant Cooper is
(07:04):
in France by October nineteen seventeen, but is in for
several more months of training before being assigned to the
twentieth Auosquadron. Injuries in a crash landing in months of
heavy rains and fog delay Cooper's first combat flights until
September nineteen eighteen, which occurred during the Battle of San Miel.
(07:30):
Cooper's flying the Deavelain IV Liberty a powerful and fairly
maneuverrable plane, but when loaded with a pilot, a Bamaedeer ordnance,
and a full tank of gas, it is considerably slower
than the German Fokker D seven. Moreover, the Liberty's gas
tank is particularly vulnerable the enemy fire, which earns the
(07:53):
plane the nickname Flaming Coffin. Lieutenant Cooper flies both bombing
and reconnaissance missions. His luck holds until a bombing mission
in late September during the Meuse Argonne offensive. His flight
of Davlins is jumped by two groups of fowkers. Cooper
(08:15):
maneuvers is playing brilliantly, and he and his bombiter in Leonard,
shoot down three Fockers before his own plane is riddled
with bullets and set of blaze. Cooper thinks of bailing out,
but he decides to stick with the plane because Leonard
is wounded and only semi conscious in the rear seat.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And you've been listening to the story of Mary and C. Cooper,
and he's the man who gave us King Kong. And
that's in nineteen thirty three. When people saw this movie,
they ran out of the theater. You can still watch
it today and it's still a remarkable piece of cinema.
And also my goodness producing the classic John Ford movies
like The Searchers or A Quiet Man or Rio Grand
(08:57):
Always in the lineage of this family, there was war
in service. When we come back more of Marian C.
Cooper's story, it's a stem winder here an our American story,
(09:39):
and we continue with our American stories. Marion Cooper's airplane
is on fire after getting riddled with bullets and a
dogfight against two German planes in World War One. He
thinks of bailing out, but decides to stick with the
plane because his bombadier ed Leonard is wounded and only
semi conscious in the rear seat. Let's return to Roger McGrath.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
With badly burned hands and using only his elbows and
knees to control the stick, Cooper crash lands the plane
in a field. By the time Cooper and Leonard extract
themselves from the wreckage, a German pilot who is one
of those in the air duel, also lands in the field.
As described by Cooper, the handsome and middle bedecked pilot
(10:29):
strides over to the wounded Americans, salutes them and renders aid.
German infantry soon arrive and Cooper and Leonard are taken
to a German field hospital for treatment. German doctors save
Cooper's hands in Leonard's life. Cooper and Leonard are listed
as MIA until the Red Cross sends word early in
(10:53):
November that they are alive and recovering from their wounds
in a German hospital. The armises is signed a week
later and Cooper enlighted, are soon repatriated. Once back in
France and now a captain, Cooper volunteers for a humanitarian
mission to Poland. The Poles are starving. Their condition made
(11:16):
even worse by a Russian Bolshevik invasion. World War One
may be over, but the Polish Russian War is just beginning.
Cooper's organization of truck convoys with tons of food and
medical supplies endears him to the Poles, especially in East Galatia,
(11:38):
now part of Ukraine. However, he longs to join the
Polls in fighting the Russian Bolsheviks, who are able to
send more than seven hundred thousand troops into Poland. After
defeating their white Russian foes, Cooper personally contacts Poland's Head
of State, Marshall Joseph Pulutsky, asking permission to organize a
(12:03):
squadron of American pilots to fight alongside the Polls and
repay the American debt oude to Poland for the services
of Kashmir Pulaski and Tadou's Koskiusko, another Polish nobleman who
served in the Continental Army with distinction. With Marshall Polutsky's approval,
(12:26):
Cooper begins recruiting American pilots. The first to join is
Colonel Cedric Errol Fauntleroy, a tall Mississippian who flew in
Eddie Rickerbocker's famed Squadron. Cooper wants a squadron named in
the honor of Pulavski, but font Leroy wants Koskiusko. Since
(12:46):
Fount Lrooy is the ranking officer, the unit becomes the
Cosciusko Squadron. In addition to Captain Cooper and Colonel Fontleroy,
the founding members of the squadron include Captain A. H.
Kelly of Virginia, Captain Ed Corsi of New York, Lieutenants
(13:08):
Ed Noble and EP Graves of Massachusetts, Lieutenant GARL. Clark
of Oklahoma, Lieutenant Ken shrewsbar Virginia, Lieutenant Elliott Chess of Texas,
and Lieutenant George Crawford of Delaware. Certainly across section of America.
Many more American volunteers will later join the squadron. By
(13:32):
January nineteen twenty, the squadron is in action, contributing significantly
to turning the tide of battle against the Russians. Captain
Cooper's in combat whenever weather permits, often flying low altitude
missions against the Cossack cavalry, which is attempting to sweep
through eastern Poland and into Warsaw. The American pilots employ
(13:55):
tactics they learned in the World War One battles of
San miel And are Gone. First, they would fly over
the Cossack columns at six hundred feet above the ground
and drop their bombs by hand. Then they would dive
down to only a few dozen feet above the ground
and fire their machine guns at the now fleeing Cossacks.
(14:17):
These bombing and strafing attacks are devastating to the Cossack cavalry,
but also take a toll on American pilots. Flying at
such low altitudes, particularly on the strafing runs, means small
arms can bring down a plane. Cooper also flies several
missions to Kiev, where he has a beautiful Polish girlfriend.
(14:40):
He later recalled the day I flew down the street
in Kiev with a wing almost shot off so I
could wave to my beautiful, luscious blonde and have her
blow a kiss at me. And if that wasn't worth
risking your life for, I don't know what is, particularly
as I had a date with that night. On July thirteenth,
(15:04):
Cooper is strafing Cossack cavalry when bullets ripped through his
gas tank and his engine begins to sputter. He switches
towards the reserve tank, but no luck. As his plane
is gliding to the earth, he watches Cossacks galloping their
horses to catch up with him. His dead stick landing
(15:25):
is smooth, but then his wheels hit a ditch and
the plain ground loops. Cooper is thrown out of the
cockpit and hits the ground with a thud. He struggles
to his feet, walks a few steps, then passes out.
Cooper regains consciousness with the help of a kick from
the boot of a dismounted Cossack. Cooper sees he's surrounded
(15:48):
by the notorious rushing cavalry thet Cooper later says they
look like wild dogs jumping after a piece of raw meat.
He endures three days of beatings and whippings before arriving
at the headquarters of the Cossack cavalry commander General Simeon Boudini.
Cooper thinks he will be interrogated and executed, but a
(16:12):
surprise to learn Boudini has a fondness for the Kosciusko pilots.
A few weeks earlier, the pilots could have killed Boudini
while he was riding in the train. However, the Americans
saw his wife was with him, and is sited to
fly by without attacking. Boudini offers Cooper a job as
(16:34):
a fine instructor for the Bolsheviks, but Cooper will have
none of it and is sent to a prison near Moscow.
Malnutrition and disease take the lives of prisoners week by week,
and for various reasons. Prisoners are occasionally lined up against
a wall and shot. Cooper is chosen for the wall
(16:55):
three times, but each time his execution is called off.
During the spring of nineteen twenty one, he and two
of his fellow prisoners, both Polish lieutenants, swear an oath
to each other that they will attempt to escape or
die trying. Days later, when they were among a group
(17:16):
of prisoners taken into a forest to chop wood, Cooper
and the Polish officers slip away, moving rapidly through the forest,
and they have the good fortune to come upon a
rail line and leap unseen aboard a freight train headed west.
The train takes them much of the way to the
Latvian border, but then its travel on foot only by
(17:40):
night and only off the beaten path. At one point,
Cooper has to cut the throat of a Russian soldier
on patrol. When Cooper reaches Warsaw, he is greeted as
a conquering hero. Cooper says all the Coscuesco Squadron did
was nothing more than payback for the contributions of Pulaski
(18:02):
and Kosciusko to America's freedom in the American Revolution. Once
back in the United States, Cooper goes to work as
a reporter for the New York Times. After six months, though,
he is able to join an expedition led by a
wealthy explorer from California, Edward Salisbury, that is sailing to
(18:25):
far off places in search of adventure. This is something
Cooper has dreamed of since he was a little kid.
The expedition takes Cooper to the most remote islands of
the Southwest Pacific and to those of the Indian Ocean,
islands of Head Honey, human sacrifice in cannibalism. Out of
(18:47):
the expedition comes hundreds of photographs and hundreds of feet
of film, which has turned into a documentary. Also coming
out of the expedition is a book, The See Gypsy,
written by Mirian Cooper. The documentary and the book tack
Salisbury and Cooper to Hollywood. Cooper is soon writing, directing,
(19:10):
or producing some of the best movies to ever come
out of Hollywood. People often say Hollywood doesn't make movies
like they used to. It may be because Hollywood doesn't
have men like Mirian Cooper anymore.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And a terrific job on the storytelling is always by
Greg Hangler and a special thanks to Roger McGrath. We
love the Hollywood Goes to War series and my goodness,
so many great men served when they didn't have to.
There were many other ways they could have gone about
helping the effort, war bonds and the like, people like
(19:50):
John Ford, Frank Capper, John Houston, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable,
Gable at the height of his career, doing this over
and over again. The story of Mary Cooper here on
our American Story
Speaker 2 (20:17):
M
Host
Lee Habeeb
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