But its badness is just part of the joke. Or alleged joke. In the Gary Cooper version, by contrast, the verse is simple, sentimental, straightforward, and meant to signify a touch of genuine, unaffected feeling in the midst of all the phoniness of the media culture (1930s version) in which the new-minted millionaire is caught up. Cooper’s Deeds was a humble practitioner of an art that he knew in greater men. There is no suggestion that the Deeds in the new version has ever taken an interest in, or even read, any poetry but his own. Perhaps that is why he asks people to forget his first name and, with it, his link to America’s now all-but forgotten 19th century bard, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.