About This Stamp
With the 15th stamp in its Legends of Hollywood series, the U.S. Postal Service honors Gary Cooper (1901–1961), a popular leading man from Hollywood’s “Golden Age.” For decades, Cooper was the all-American hero, whose believable performances and strong, silent appeal brought him a lifetime of fame.
Art director Phil Jordan designed the stamp using a portrait by artist Kazuhiko Sano, which was based on a black-and-white photograph of Gary Cooper taken by George Hurrell circa 1940. The selvage art, based on a still from High Noon (1952), depicts Gary Cooper in his Academy Award-winning role as the courageous Marshal Will Kane.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.