Gary Cooper, Soap Star

Anybody can be hobbled by bad material, even a great like Gary Cooper. For evidence of this, just watch Ten North Frederick, which shows up at noon ET tomorrow on the Fox Movie Channel.

The movie starts off with the funeral of Gary Cooper's character, Joseph Chapin. Apparently, there was a good deal of conflict within the family, as when daughter Ann (Diane Varsi) arrives home, she finds she has to go upstairs to deal with her brother Joby (Ray Stricklyn), who has decided to deal with his problems by getting rip-roaring drunk. Seeing Joby drunk reminds Ann of the bad times, specifically everything that happened over the last five years, and we get our cheap flashback here....

Flash back five years. Joseph Chapin is a prominent lawyer from a prominent family in Anytown USA. He seems happy with his life, but his wife Edith (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is a domineering woman, who wants Joseph to go on to bigger and better things. This means trying to get Joseph the nomination for Lieutenant Governor, although why this is apparently such a Big Deal is never really explained. Unfortunately, politics is quite the dirty thing, and if Joseph has any skeletons in his closet, they're sure to be found out. This includes son Joby, who would really rather be a jazz musician, but gets pushed into the military where he's supposed to become a hero, apparently. All this proves to be a bit too much for Joseph, who just has to get away for a while.

To do this, he goes to New York, to visit Ann, who's run off to live there. When he shows up at Ann's apartment, he finds that she's not there. Ann's roommate, Kate (Suzy Parker), is, however, and the old man and the young woman strike up a conversation when he realizes that she's the friend of one of his old college buddies. It turns into more than just a conversation, though, and that could have seriously negative consequences for Joseph. Ann, meanwhile, realizes that her roommate is having an affair with somebody, although she doesn't realize that somebody is her own father.

It's the sort of stuff you could imagine Douglas Sirk directing, in lavish color and with a bigger budget. Gary Cooper, and everybody else in the movie, tries hard. As such, it's not really the fault of any of the actors that the movie doesn't really succeed. It's more that the characters are written such that there's no real reason for us to care about any of them, even poor put upon Joseph. That, and the plot is more worthy of a daytime soap opera than a serious movie. Still, if you're a fan of Gary Cooper, Ten North Frederick is worth a look-see.

Ten North Frederick doesn't seem to have been released to DVD, and the Fox Movie Channel's website lists tomorrow as the movie's last showing for a while, so you're going to have to catch it then.