That Hamilton Woman, now streaming on Max, was Winston Churchill’s favorite film and it’s easy to see why.

The stirring 1941 drama of the scandalous affair of Emma Lady Hamilton and Horatio Lord Nelson set against the backdrop of late 18th-early 19th English history is a film that never gets old thanks primarily to the flawless performances of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier at the height of their careers. In the preceding two years, she lit up the screen in Gone with the Wind and Waterloo Bridge as did he in Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. The two actors who had carried on their own scandalous affair since starring in 1937’s Fire Over England married in 1940 after divorcing their respective spouses. Their later careers are well known by today’s film buffs. Less known today is the career of Gladys Cooper who co-stars as Olivier’s wife, Lady Nelson.

Cooper was a titled Lady in real life while she was married to second husband, Sir Neville Pearson from 1928-1936 so it was perfect casting for the actress who was the British pin-up queen of World War I thanks to a postcard in which she is shown demurely lifting her skirt above her ankles.

Cooper had a son and daughter from her first marriage to naval captain Herbert Buckmaster (1908-1921). She had a daughter from her second marriage. Both of her daughters married actors, the older one married Robert Morley, the younger one married Robert Hardy. Her stepson, actor John Merivale, from her third marriage to actor Philip Merivale (1937 to his death in 1946), became Leigh’s companion from her separation and divorce from Olivier to her death in 1965.

Just as you can trace the careers of longtime stars like Leigh and Olivier from their available films, you can trace Cooper’s fascinating career in the same way.

It was another film in which Olivier starred that brought Cooper to Hollywood in 1939. It was a three-week assignment to play his sister in Rebecca, which she did. She stayed to play the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of several generations of stars through 1967 when she returned to England and was immediately made a Dame of the British Empire.

Cooper’s second Hollywood film was 1940’s Kitty Foyle in which she played Ginger Rogers’ snooty intended mother-in-law. That same year, Bette Davis starred in a remake of 1929’s The Letter based on the play that W. Somerset Maugham had written for Cooper. Two years later she received her first Oscar nomination for playing Davis’ repressive mother in Now, Voyager. The year after that she received a second Oscar nomination for playing the doubting nun in The Song of Bernadette.

The actress had another stellar year in 1944 with two great performances, the first as Irene Dunne’s mother-in-law and Roddy McDowall’s grandmother in The White Cliffs of Dover. The second was as Greer Garson’s boozy daughter in Mrs. Parkington in which Garson ages from 18-83. In 1945, their roles would be reversed, and Cooper would play Garson’s intended mother-in-law as Gregory Peck’s mother in The Valley of Decision. Alas, Peck marries Jessica Tandy instead, so she becomes Tandy’s mother-in-law and later, Dean Stockwell’s grandmother.

In 1946, Cooper, Tandy, and Stockwell were all in The Green Years. This time Tandy was her granddaughter and Dean Stockwell was Tandy’s nephew and Cooper’s orphaned great-grandson. Tandy’s real-life husband Hume Cronyn played her father and Cooper’s son.

1947 began with Cooper married to Edmund Gwenn in Green Dolphin Street while reminiscing about her long-ago romance with Frank Morgan. Lana Turner and Donna Reed played her daughters. It ended with Cooper playing the town matriarch in the Christmas classic, The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven, Monty Woolley, James Gleason, and Elsa Lanchester.

Cooper made her first appearance in a musical as Judy Garland’s aunt in 1948’s The Pirate. She reunited with both Dean Stockwell and Elsa Lanchester for 1949’s The Secret Garden in which she played the stern housekeeper. She then reunited with Jennifer Jones for the first time since 1945’s Love Letters for 1949’s Madame Bovary.

Back in a nun’s habit for 1951’s Thunder on the Hill, Cooper was Claudette Colbert’s Mother Superior in this clever murder mystery also starring Ann Blyth. She was the French queen in 1952’s At Sword’s Point, a sequel to The Three Musketeers starring Cornel Wilde and Maureen O’Hara.

With her big screen roles on the wane, Cooper spent a good part of her time in the 1950s on TV. She also returned to Broadway in 1955 for the first time since the 1930s to star in The Chalk Garden for which she was nominated for a Tony for Best Actress in a Play.

Back in Hollywood for 1958’s Separate Tables, Cooper gave perhaps the performance of her career as Deborah Kerr’s overbearing mother, but it was David Niven and Wendy Hiller in more sympathetic roles who won Oscars for the film.

In January 1962, Cooper gave one of the greatest TV performances of all time in the Twilight Zone episode, Nothing in the Dark as the old lady who refuses to let wounded policeman Robert Redford in her apartment for fear that he may be death incarnate.

Later in 1962, she was back on Broadway in A Passage to India for which she received another Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Play in the role that won Peggy Ashcroft an Oscar twenty-two years later.

Cooper was back on screen in 1963’s The List of Adrian Messenger with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and a screenful of stars. She then went into My Fair Lady for which she received her third Oscar nomination. She was supposed to have reprised her stage role in the film version of The Chalk Garden but had to drop out because of overtime on My Fair Lady and an approaching start date on her TV series, The Rogues with Charles Boyer and David Niven. Edith Evans replaced her.

Cooper’s last Hollywood film before heading back to England was 1967’s The Happiest Millionaire with Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, and Geraldine Page, singing a duet with the latter. She died in 1971 from pneumonia which she was said to have gotten from a drafty dressing room while starring in a revival of The Chalk Garden.

Be sure to check out these classic films of Gladys Cooper’s as well as some I may have forgotten. All the ones I mentioned are available on home video.

Happy viewing.