Dame Gladys Cooper
(1888-1971), ActressSitter in 174 portraits
A great British figure of twentieth-century theatre, Cooper started her career as a chorus girl in The Girls of Gottenberg (1907) with George Edwardes's company at the Gaiety theatre in London, returning the following year as a 'travelling newspaper beauty' in Havana. She was the most popular picture-postcard beauty of the First World War. In 1916, she began to act at the Playhouse, later becoming its manager - one of few women before the Second World War to manage a West End theatre. In 1940, a small role in Hitchcock's Rebecca led to a thirty-year Hollywood career. Notable film successes include Now, Voyager (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943) and My Fair Lady (1964). She was created a Dame in 1967.
Dame Gladys Cooper; Sally Pearson (née Cooper) as a 'Coster boy'; Sir Gerald Du Maurier
by Bassano Ltd
bromide print, January 1934
NPG x85761
by Bassano Ltd
half-plate glass negative, 16 January 1934
NPG x26772
by Bassano Ltd
half-plate glass negative, 16 January 1934
NPG x26773
Sally Pearson (née Cooper); Dame Gladys Cooper; Sir Gerald Du Maurier
by Bassano Ltd
half-plate glass negative, 16 January 1934
NPG x26774
Sally Pearson (née Cooper); Sir Gerald Du Maurier; Dame Gladys Cooper
by Bassano Ltd
half-plate glass negative, 16 January 1934
NPG x26775
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x29935
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x6384
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x6386
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x6385
Philip Merivale; Dame Gladys Cooper
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x6387
Philip Merivale and Dame Gladys Cooper
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, November 1940
NPG x6388
Dame Gladys Cooper with her daughter Sally Pearson (née Cooper)
by Dorothy Wilding
chlorobromide print, 1942
NPG x6389
by Anthony Buckley
modern bromide print from original negative, 1950
NPG x75976
by Anthony Buckley
modern bromide print from original negative, 1950
NPG x75978
by Cecil Beaton
bromide print on white card mount, 1950
NPG x14051
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print, circa 1952
NPG x29936
by Dorothy Wilding
bromide print on tissue and card mount, 1955
NPG x29937
by Dorothy Wilding
half-plate film negative, 22 November 1955
NPG x34770
by Dorothy Wilding
half-plate film negative, 22 November 1955
NPG x34771
by Dorothy Wilding
half-plate film negative, 22 November 1955
NPG x34773
Related People
- John Rodney Buckmaster (son)
- Philip Merivale (husband)
- Joan Morley (née Buckmaster) (daughter)
- Sheridan Morley (grandson)
- Sir Neville Arthur Pearson, 2nd Bt (husband)
- Sally Pearson (née Cooper) (daughter)
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