Gary Cooper, Super Superstar

It is difficult to overstate how big a star Gary Cooper was. For a while he was the highest paid person in the United States. Not the highest paid actor, the highest paid person.

Gary Cooper, (Coop), was one of Hollywood's most popular leading men during a career which spanned 5 decades. He received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, winning twice. He also received an Honorary Award from the Academy in 1961. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 11.
In 1952 an aging, weary looking Cooper assumed what may be his greatest role, that of the embattled marshal abandoned by the townspeople he spent years protecting, in High Noon (1952), a "traditional" Western. He won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance (his first was for Sergeant York in 1941. Alvin York had refused to authorize a movie about his life unless Gary Cooper was the actor who portrayed him). He wasn't present to receive his Academy Award in February 1953. He asked John Wayne to accept it on his behalf.
In April 1961 Coop won a special, career-achievement Academy Award, which was accepted in an emotional speech by his friend James Stewart. A month later he died on May 31, 1961 of lung and prostrate cancer in Los Angeles, California.