Cooper, Merian Caldwell, Brig Gen

"In the 1950s and '60s he was a big crusader in fighting communism, backing the now disgraced efforts of Senator Joseph McCarthy to root out traitors in Hollywood and Washington, D.C.
Among other things in his career he was a newspaperman in four different cities, a pilot, an explorer in the Middle East, an airline director, an Air Force general, and a movie executive. He married a movie actress, invented John Wayne,  arranged Katharine Hepburn's first screen test, teamed Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, raised a family, and died peacefully at 78."

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wikipedia:
World War I

Cooper was a DH-4 bomber pilot during World War I. He was shot down and captured by the Germans, serving out the remainder of the war in a POW camp. According to Stephen Skinner (The Stand), Captain Cooper was allowed to remain in the U.S. Air Service after the war, despite serious burns to his arms incurred in the crash of his DH-4. In January 1919, while on special duty with the American Red Cross in France, he located the gravesite of Lieutenant Frank Luke, Jr., America's second-highest-scoring ace of World War I. Cooper's subsequent report helped to confirm the identity and location of Lt. Luke's first burial site, which was near the village of Murvaux.

 Poland

From late 1919 until the 1921 Treaty of Riga, Cooper was a member of a volunteer American flight squadron, the Kociuszko Squadron, which supported the Polish Army in the Polish-Soviet War. On July 26, 1920, his plane was shot down, and he spent nearly 9 months in a Soviet prisoner of war camp. He escaped just before the war was over and made it to Latvia. For valor he was decorated by Polish commander-in-chief Józef Pisudski with the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.

During his time as a POW, Cooper wrote an autobiography: Things Men Die For by "C". He turned the manuscript over to Dagmar Matson to type for publisher submission. It was submitted to G. P. Putnam's Sons in New York (the Knickerbocker Press) in 1927 and published that same year. Just after the book's release, he changed his mind about releasing the personal details about "Nina" and asked Dagmar to buy up every copy she could find. She managed to acquire most of the 5,000 copies that had been released. Cooper kept a copy and Dagmar kept a copy, while the rest were eventually destroyed. Dagmar sent Nina money every month, on behalf of Cooper, until his death.

World War II

Though old enough to be free of service in World War II, he enlisted anyway, commissioned as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces, and accompanied Col. Robert L. Scott to India while serving as a logistics liaison for the Doolittle Raid. He and Scott traveled to Dinjan Airfield, Assam, where they assisted Col. Caleb V. Haynes, a bomber pilot, in setting up the Assam-Burma-China Ferrying Command, which was the origin of The Hump Airlift. He went on to serve in China as chief of staff for General Claire Chennault of the China Air Task Force — precursor of the Fourteenth Air Force — then from 1943 to 1945 in the Southwest Pacific as chief of staff for the Fifth Air Force's Bomber Command.

Leading many missions and carefully planning them to minimize loss of life, he was known for his hard work and relentless planning. At the end of the war, he was promoted to brigadier general. For his contributions, he was also aboard the USS Missouri to witness Japan's surrender.

Film career

Cooper led movie production for RKO Radio Pictures before and after World War II. He frequently collaborated with Ernest B. Schoedsack. Cooper also served as vice president in charge of production for Pioneer Pictures from 1934 to 1936, and vice president of Selznick International Pictures in 1936–1937, before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Cooper started his film career with documentaries for Paramount Pictures such as Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), which combined real footage with staged sequences. In Chang , he used this technique to create a memorable finale featuring an elephant stampede. His movie The Four Feathers was filmed among the fighting tribes of the Sudan.

Throughout his career, Cooper was a proponent of technical innovation. The film King Kong, which he co-wrote, co-directed, and appeared in, was a breakthrough in this regard. Another outstanding film that he produced in trying to follow up on his success with King Kong was the 1935 film She. Additionally, Cooper helped pave the way for such ground-breaking technologies as Technicolor and the widescreen process Cinerama.

Cooper was a good friend and frequent collaborator with noted Western director John Ford. In 1947, they formed Argosy Productions and produced such notable films as Wagon Master (1950), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Searchers (1956). He was nominated for an Academy Award for producing The Quiet Man in 1952, but lost to Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth. Cooper did however receive an Honorary Oscar that same year.

Cooper has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (his name is misspelled "Meriam C. Cooper").
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Source:
www.imdb.com/name/nm0178260/

Archive Footage:

1. I'm King Kong!: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (2005) (archive sound) .... Himself
2. Cinerama Adventure (2002) .... Himself/Airplane gunner (in "King Kong")
3. "Hollywood Stuntmakers"
       - Episode #1.0 (1999) TV episode (uncredited) .... Pilot of plane that kills Kong
       - King Kong und andere Kuscheltiere (1999) TV episode (uncredited) .... Pilot of plane that kills Kong