The Wimbledon Final That Never Was – Sydney Wood excerpt
The Wimbledon Final That Never Was - Sydney Wood excerpt | 
The following is an excerpt from the newly-released book THE WIMBLEDON FINAL THAT NEVER WAS by Sidney Wood ($15.95, New Chapter Press) available here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0942257847/ref=as_li_tf_til?tag=tennisgrancom-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0942257847&adid=02ABCPC16RGAMRWDSGQ9&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldtennismagazine.com%2F)
Shooting it up with Gary Cooper
Apart from being an inveterate tennis devotee,
Gary Cooper, the Academy-award winning tough-guy
actor, was an enthusiastic gunslinger. His ravishing wife Rocky
wasn’t bad either, having been numero uno in California skeet
shooting for five straight years. So it was no surprise, visiting
them in Tucson, to have Gary march out a brand new pair
of pearl-handled pistols and head for an orange grove to try
them out.
A Coke bottle was set up on a branch, and Gary and Rocky
fired away without success. I was never better than a poorish
pistoleer so when Gary handed over one of the guns, I didn’t
bother to take aim and fired away from the hip. My first shot
blasted the bottle to smithereens. Gary and Rocky were agape,
but I just blew into the muzzle and handed the gun back to
Gary and was smart enough to refuse all demands to repeat
my Calamity Jane performance.
The trip wasn’t a total success because I was less lucky
in purchasing a pair of hard-starched Levis to go bareback
riding, the only way I’d done it in my earlier Arizona homesteading
days. But that was ten years before, and I ate dinner
standing up.
In those days (late 1930s and early 1940s), Hollywood was
a relatively small community where everyone in the film industry
and its fringes knew one another on a nickname basis.
My mining offices were on Sunset Boulevard, just where the
then existing Beverly Hills bridle path began, and since my
street level co-tenant was Jack Morgan’s much-in-vogue Cock
‘n Bull restaurant, I had quite few visitors around lunch hour.
One day, Gary came by and wished he hadn’t. Our office
staff was about to have a coffee-break softball game on a
neighboring lot and Gary came along. He was handed the bat
and proceeded to hit a slow grounder toward first base. When
the first baseman (our bookkeeper), whose name I mercifully
omit, saw the God-like Cooper descending on him, he completely
blew his cool and hurled the ball at Gary, blasting him
right between the eyes. Gary went down like a felled oak, and
we thought for a moment that it was bad news. Thankfully,
he wasn’t seriously hurt, but I doubt if either our demoralized
accountant or Coop had any inclination to play baseball for
a spell.
When Gary later starred as Lou Gehring in Pride of the
Yankees, I asked him if he were ever haunted by his earlier
beaning. He just gave me one of those quirk-mouth Cooper
looks.
When my first wife Edith and I would pick up Gary and
Rocky (a girlhood schoolmate of Edith’s) to go out for dinner
and dancing, the ladies would repair to the boudoir to
prink up; and Gary, who was no boozer but appreciated male
conviviality, would pour us a healthy belt of scotch and say,
“Here’s to sin.” This was unfailingly the same Gary you see on
film and always game to try anything that looked like fun.
One time, when a couple of our new, brightly emblazoned
Budge-Wood Service trucks (yes, that was my Sidney Wood,
Don Budge Laundry, etc. enterprise) were delivered to our
Manhattan plant, Gary happened to be visiting me. I said,
“Let’s go,” so the boys loaded up one of the trucks and Gary
and I took off, with Gary making front door deliveries to some
incredulous clients.
Topics: 10sballs.com, Sydney Wood, Wimbledon
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