Elizabeth Cooper

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Elizabeth Cooper (born 1910) is one of the more famous half-American, half-Filipina actresses of all time. She was born Isabel Rosario Cooper to a Dutch-American father and Filipino mother. As a teenager she travelled around Southeast Asia as a torch singer-entertainer and eventually caught the eye of America's most famous military hero, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of all U.S. troops in the Philippines.

She subsequently became his secret mistress in Manila, a fact the fifty-something MacArthur vigorously hid from his 80 year old mother, "Pinky" MacArthur.

Isabel, or "Dimples" eventually ended up esconsed in an apartment in Washington DC when General MacArthur was appointed Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and was transferred there, a situation which did not best suit Cooper's lively personality. According to one biographer of MacArthur, William Manchester , MacArthur "showered [Cooper] with presents and bought her many lacy tea gowns, but no raincoat. She didn't need one, he told her; her duty lay in bed".

When the secret affair threatened to become public, MacArthur brought it to an end and gave Cooper a ticket back to the Philippines[[1]].

From this point on Cooper began a downward slide into the depression which led to her eventual suicide several decades later.

She is best known for performing the very first kissing scene in Philippine movie history with Luis Tuason in the 1926 silent film, Ang Tatlong Hambog. (This was the first such scene in Philippine cinema.) Also known as Dimples, she made her last movie, Ikaw Pala, in 1941 under LVN Pictures.

She committed suicide in 1962.