"Three Pals" (1926) is worth watching just to see 24 year old Gary Cooper appear in three one or two second scenes so early in his career. Sporting a fine looking sporty English get-up in blue blazer and cuffed white linen pants, he's lanky as a plank and towers - absolutely towers - over his fellow actors and actresses, and has a 20s trimmed, movie mustache. Always smiling, he looks nevertheless dumbfounded about what he's doing, and probably because of his height, in his two crowd scenes he's in the rear. My Alpha video DVD says "in his first screen appearance", though in actuality he'd been in over a dozen other silents in uncredited small extra rôles. His rôle here, too, is uncredited. He's listed on the IMDb as "Car Driver Flirting with Betty." Yes, that scene's there, but he's in two future scenes near the end. The picture on the front of the Alpha video shows Gary Cooper(!) letting Marilyn Mills off in front of her home. Watching, you'd barely know he was in the film, and, no, it's definitely NOT about him! Now, about the film...
Two Southern gentleman horsemen from Kentucky (one Major so-in-so and the other Colonel so-in-so) are best friends and next door neighbors (since childhood). Colonel has a daughter and Major has a son: they love each other. Major and the Colonel have an argument. Colonel throws Major off his property - fo' good! "Keep yo' son away fro' my dawwter!" Eventually, through the introduction of one of the Major's factors, who's definitely a shady dark hat mustachioed sort, the Major is killed and the Colonel implicated. Meanwhile, the Colonel's daughter has been sent to France to boarding school for two years. The Colonel's court case drains all his money and his horses - except for two horses, Star and Beverly. Just so you can be prepared: the two horses are the stars of the show, along with a dog whose name I don't remember or who wasn't named. NOW: the ostensible star of the show, Marilyn Mills, whose company, Marilyn Mills Productions, produced the show, comes home after her two year stint in France, and finds her father broke and broken and the horse farm depleted and failing. She DOES see the Major's son again and they proclaim their love again. NOW, it's time to find the genuine murderer. Enter the two horses to do the good deed. I'll leave it at that except to say Marilyn Mills wins the $10,000 stakes win at the major horse race in the last five minutes. Do the dog and horses save the day otherwise? Watch and find out!
Not bad, just a genuine "B". Kiddies will enjoy while with grandma. Dad and Mom are at the grocery store. Who will enjoy it best? Grandma! I ain't Grandma, I'm grandpa, but I snuck out with Granny and went to the movies with her. Oh, yeah, also in the film are Josef Swickard, William H. Turner, Martin Turner, Ralph Emerson, and James McLaughlin. You'll see Lafe McKee in a crowd scene. Not necessarily recommended, but you've seen much, much worse. Just think, this is 1926 and Cooper was fortuitously cast in "The Winning of Barbara Worth" that year. What may be fascinating to some: Martin Turner, a black man who played stereotypical black rôles in very white films for 52 known films until 1942 (not dying until 1957 at age 74) actually is a credulous, well treated employee in the film, called by all "Uncle Luke", and the typical treatment of blacks in films of the period is not seen as much. Interesting because of its Southern setting.
