Inside High Noon

[ Suspenseful Music ] High Noon A simple little Western And will the bride and groom kindly step forward.

On his wedding day.

A small town Marshal learns that a man he sent to prison five years before has been freed and is coming back on the noon train.

They pardoned Frank Miller.

What is it Will?

I don't believe A week ago too.

Nice of them to let you know... And that ain't all.

Ben Miller is down at the depot now with Jim Pearce and Jack Colby.

They asked about the noon train.

The noon train?

Will.

You get out of this town.

Get out of this town this very minute.

Come on, let's get them going.

Never mind that.

Now we've got to go.

What happens over the next hour is also simple.

Kane's back.

I don't believe it.

I just seen him.

High Noon A simple little Western.

And yet this simple film, 70 years after its release ... continues to resonate.

Its title has become part of the lexicon.

Even I know an expression to be High Nooned ...

Which means ... you've been left in the lurch.

When events around the world demand a metaphor.

High Noon becomes ... the international symbol.

You, uhm look ... around ... like on the Internet ...for instance ... if you were leafing through High Noon ...

you would find reference, after reference, after reference.

Countless references to High Noon for Kasparov ... in the chess match, High Noon for the CEO of Wunderlich.

High Noon for the financial company of ... Everything is High Noon.

The phrase High Noon means the moment of reckoning.

Politicians seem especially drawn to it.

It's interesting that... three of our presidents ... Eisenhower, President Clinton and President Bush ... ...

have had High Noon as their favorite film.

I think what resonates with all kinds of politicians is that Cooper faces apparently insurmountable obstacles and has been abandoned by the people who should be his allies.

And I think that that has a kind of a universal appeal, whatever your politics are, because if you've ever had a position of responsibility and tried to do anything with it.

You know what it's like to have to make hard decisions that are of uncertain outcome.

Often without the allies, you think you ought to have.

For many ... High Noon is the Western.

Among the greatest films of all time.

Jammed with indelible images.

High Noon was an immediate success when it opened in July of 1952.

An instant classic.

New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his review.

High Noon is a Western to challenge Stagecoach for the all time championship and yet its status as a classic has been hard won.

Indeed.

High Noon is attacked for abusing the Western genre.

Some saying it isn't a western at all.

It just happens ... to take place in the West.

Many people who like Westerns don't like High Noon.

I think part of the problem lies in the directness ... with which the film operates.

It's social symbolism ... its cultural commentary, and whether one ties that to the McCarthy period as the immediate referent for the film or not.

That directness is still there.

And for many who like Westerns, there's a feeling that that's somehow not proper.

Partly, it's political opposition to the film.

I mean, some of it was just pure ... sort of right wing irritation with the with the film subtext, even though there are people, of course, to interpret it quite the other way.

It's possible to read that film, to see that film as being a pro McCarthyite track That is ... that ... that Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, A rather tired and haggard and beaten down sheriff.

But you could also see that as McCarthy himself and the Frank Miller gang... as communism.

But I don't really think it was a movie... Whose appeal was rooted in either interpretation.

The thing that makes it a great movie ... ... here's a man who just got married.

He's done his duty.

He wants to lay down his responsibilities, go off with his wife, who's a Quaker ... and make a new life.

And yet he knows that if he goes away ... this thug and his gang will take over the town and crush the decent people in it who aren't strong enough to stand up to it.

And it nobody can stop it but him.

And even when he can't get any help ... which terrifies him further, he stays ... and he does the right thing anyway.

That's the greatness of the movie.

That High Noon, a black and white independent film shot in 28 days on a very tight $750,000 budget.

Still, arouses heated debate among partizans and naysayers is testament to its lasting impact.

Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman were partners in their own independent film company in the postwar 1940s, when Foreman first began developing High Noon.

The idea really came to him in 1947-1948, he wanted to make a film about aggression set in the Western context, and he wrote a four page outline.

And in that time someone brought to the attention of my father a story, a short story called The Tin Star.

He read it and it was very similar to the idea he'd had and he wasn't sure if maybe he'd even read ...

The Tin Star, there are differences in the two stories.

He then optioned The Tin Star anyway.

The first director signed Joseph Losey came under fire from the House un-American Activities Committee.

Kramer let him go.

Joseph Losey moved to England, where he had a distinguished career.

Kramer next turned to Fred Zinnemann.

Kramer had Fred Zinnemann under a three picture contract.

Zinnemann had already directed The Men for Kramer ... which had been scripted by Carl Foreman.

Zinnemann read the script and loved it.

Zinnemann was hired to direct, but he was hardly a Hollywood A-list.

Hign Noon was just getting set up.

He had a three picture deal with Stanley Kramer ... and the first picture he had done was called The Men with Marlon Brando, which was Marlon Brando's first movie.

And while it was a quite a good movie, I think it was a box office dud.

They were still shy $250,000 on the $750,000 budget.

Every studio had turned them down.

It was too dark ... grim ... too bleak.

No action, no scenery.

My father at the time was known as a director's director or art house director, which means instant death at the box office.

It's hard today to picture anyone ... but Gary Cooper as Marshall Will Kane.

And yet Cooper was no one's first choice.

When fashioning the original script ... Foreman had in mind Henry Fonda.

But by the time casting began, Fonda had fallen afoul of the un-American Activities Committee.

HUAC.

He moved to New York, where for the next seven years he did only Broadway.

Indeed, several major stars had already turned down the role.

Among them, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Charlton Heston.

One man who was not offered the role of Will Kane ... ... was John Wayne.

And therefore, contrary to widespread Internet misinformation, John Wayne never turned the role down.

A Salinas, California lettuce grower Bruce Church, offered to put up the final $250,000 with one proviso ... that Gary Cooper star.

No Cooper ... no money.

Though Zinnemann and Forman were both intrigued.

Their enthusiasm was tempered.

They were worried about his age because the character as written was only supposed to be in his mid-thirties.

Cooper read the script and immediately said yes.

Taking a drastic cut in salary against a hefty percentage.

This was the summer of 1951 and the House on un-American Activities Committee was out in force.

Anti-Communist witch hunt hysteria was at fever pitch.

Carl Foreman had already learned he was under investigation and was rewriting accordingly.

It was partially intended as an allegory of the blacklist, but that's absolutely the case.

Foreman was concerned about Cooper ... his conservative politics.

How would Cooper handle that?

He had, in fact, been a member of the Communist Party.

Zinnemann began intense pre-production work.

The visual style.

My father had three elements that he intercut.

One was the threat, which was the static train tracks ... and the second was the idea of the victim, which was Gary Cooper, walking the streets in constant motion.

And the third was the urgency of the situation, which was the clocks on the wall So that they had the rhythm, the cutting rhythm of the three different elements juxtaposed all the time.

And so it was put together like a jigsaw puzzle, which was the intent from the original script.

The idea for the visual style came from Matthew Brady and the Civil War photographs, and he used his longtime friend, Floyd Crosby, who he had first met with Robert Flaherty in the thirties, and they had been friends for many years.

He was the cameraman, and together they developed a style which was a washed out sky with a newsreel.

Look to it.

Put Cooper in black against white ... so that he wanted to make it very contrasty.

And by doing that, create a very powerful, purely cinematic image about loneliness and courage and isolation and the interior drama of the film.

This interior crisis of conscience ... this choice that the character makes.

And as if to prove the adage that it's an ill wind that doesn't blow, someone some good... And he was helped, he said, in his efforts by the smog in the valley because they were forced to shoot most of this in the Columbia backlot because of the tight schedule and the tight budget.

And so in most cases ... they had a very hazy sky every day and which helped them get this effect.

High Noon was a true collaborative effort.

Some critics at the time seemed to sense this.

Zinnemann even admitted he couldn't take credit for discovering the striking 22 year old actress Grace Kelly.

Jay Kanter... was her agent at the time and brought her picture around to show Kramer and my father and said that she'd only done a bit.

And Kramer responded to the picture right away and hired her on the spot.

So when she came to meet my father ... she had, in essence been hired by Kramer.

So he had to accept her whether he wanted to or not.

Nor did Zinnemann ever regret the casting.

His comments about her was that she was kind of very cold and uptight and therefore perfect for the part because it was her first acting role and she was uncomfortable.

I guess I did see it ... together with her the first time I ever saw it ... and she was kind of I was going to say bashful, but but she wasn't totally satisfied with her performance.

It is the very fact that High Noon is a collaborative effort that has been used to attack the film.

There's also the sense that it is sort of a collaborative film because it isn't ... You know.

It doesn't fit into that.

That sort of very crude auteurist template.

Kramer had developed the script with Foreman, and by the time my father read it, it was although a first draft ... in his mind.

Ready to go.

So he felt his job was to execute what he thought was a brilliant script in the best way he knew how.

And Zinnemann has been very candid about High Noon having multiple authors.

You know, there's Carl Foreman's script which comes out of his political bitterness during the McCarthy period.

There's Stanley Kramer ... as producer, having a an interest in making independent films that will be about, social problems, problem issues.

And and Zinnemann coming to the film with his own set of experiences as an Austrian Jew who was troubled by the rise of fascism in Europe and could find in this script a potent treatment of a community in crisis, a community that doesn't respond to the dangers that surround it.

And by not responding, forfeits its democratic institutions.

High Noon's, very low budget of $750,000 in a tight four week shooting schedule left no room for experimentation on set.

Zinnemann shot the script almost as is.

His background in documentaries and short subjects was invaluable for the rigorous demands of High Noon.

My father started in the business as an apprentice to Robert Flaherty ... who was the great classic documentarian.

And uhm... he learned everything not only from him, but also in the shorts department at MGM, where he was assigned to work on one Reelers and two Reelers.

And during that time ... he had to do pictures such as ...

The Life of George Washington Carver, which covered 80 years, and he had to do it in 10 minutes.

Nothing happens by accident in High Noon.

When a character acts or reacts, offers a line of dialog, the action, the reaction, the line of dialog ... each is layered in.

There's no happenstance.

In breaking the window ... Ben Miller alerts Will Kane to their presence.

A lesser film would have let Miller's rash act stand alone, but High Noon prepared the audience.

From the opening scene, when we meet Ben Miller.

He's a hot head.

In a hurry?

Yeah, I sure am.

Drinks and become surly.

I thought you'd grew up by now.

I thought your disposition might have sweetened up a little down in Abilene.

Women are prey.

Hey, that wasn't here five years ago.

So what?

Nothing ... yet.

Keeps drinking .... arrogant and smug.

There will be a hot time in the old town tonight.

Hey, Ben.

I wouldn't be surprised.

So ... when Ben Miller rashly breaks the window ... the script has carefully laid the groundwork.

In another instance ... Lon Chaney's retired Marshal uses arthritis and busted knuckles as his reason for not helping Will Kane.

Will you come down to that depot with me?

Nah... You know how I feel about you.

But I ain't going with you.

Seems like a man with busted knuckles didn't need arthritis too don't it?

I couldn't do nothing for you.

You'd be worried about me.

You'd get yourself killed worrying about me.

It's too one sided like it is.

And surely no one in the audience would have questioned the remark.

But High Noon ... still laid the groundwork.

Goodbye Amy.

No dialog.

But there is.

The visual groundwork for later.

Of course.

No matter how meticulous.

No film is flawless.

Things were different then Kane.

You had six steady deputies to start off with.

Every one a top gun.

You ain't got but two now.

Two deputies?

There had been a second deputy in the shooting script.

This subplot had the second deputy returning to Hadleyville with a prisoner.

The three brief scenes involving the deputy and his prisoner were shot on the last day and a half.

Here's the original shooting script introducing the second deputy.

Here's how the scene would have played as written.

And here it is ... as actually played.

You ain't got two.

Harve Pell here says, he just quit.

Introducing a subplot at this point ... would have taken us out of town.

Throwing the main drama off stride.

The shooting script returns to the second deputy Two more times.

Even though the three second deputy sequences were never used.

A reference to Toby, the second deputy appears in the saloon scene.

So tight was High Noon's script that it was impossible to cut the brief line.

And so smooth is High Noon that this slight imperfection goes unnoticed.

Long before Sergio Leone's gritty look High Noon, captured in black and white, the same sweaty atmosphere without calling attention to itself.

The grimy perspiration ... merely a part of the tapestry.

High Noon was far ahead of its time in its treatment of female and male characters.

The two leading female characters, Helen Ramirez and Amy Fowler, aren't shrinking violets, trotting the well-worn submissive path.

In today's parlance ...

They have agency.

I mean it ... if you won't go with me now ...

I'll be on that train when it leaves here.

Get out, Harvey.

I might just do that.

Then do it.

Helen Ramirez, the so-called other woman, is the financial power behind the town's upstanding white businessmen.

Is there anything wrong Mrs. Ramirez?

No.

Then why did you send for me?

I'm leaving town.

I want to sell the store.

You want to buy me out?

Well, how much did you want?

$2000.

I think that's fair.

Adding special dimension to this other woman.

Helen is Mexican, but she's not patronized.

I am all alone in the world.

Helen Ramirez is no stereotype.

A crude Mexican female foil berating a cowering lunk of a husband.

And as for you, I don't like anybody to put his hands on me unless I want him to.

And I don't like you to ... any more.

An astoundingly strong ... feminist role model.

A Mexican woman running a saloon on her own as the owner, as a woman who has to make her own living.

Strong, tough ... smart, independent.

Harve is now the boytoy of ... Helen Ramirez and boy, is this movie ahead of its time.

In terms of that.

But I'm going to tell you something about you and your friend Kane.

You're a good looking boy.

You have big broad shoulders.

But he is a man.

It takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man Harvey and you have a long way to go.

Helen Ramirez lets her feelings be known.

I hate this town.

I always hated it.

To be a Mexican woman in a town like this.

Despite the open racism among Hadleyville's citizens... You know, my wife.

Helen Ramirez, has managed to succeed on her own terms.

Also atypical is the fate of Helen.

Inevitably, in Westerns, the other woman dies, saving the hero.

So he's free to ride off into the sunset with his fair haired woman.

So many westerns.

The Mexican's little girl just takes a bullet for the hero in the third Reel and dies in his arms, thereby freeing him to marry the blond virgin anyway she's not around anymore.

Carl Foreman's script has none of that.

Helen Ramirez not only doesn't die saving the hero, she rides off into the sunset.

As her final proud act.

She stares down her former lover ... Frank Miller.

Helen Ramirez is a complex character.

Well, what do you want?

You want me to help you?

You want me to ask Frank to let you go?

You want me to beg for you?

Well, I would not do it.

It is Helen Ramirez and not Will Kane, who is High Noon's through character.

It is she ... who has known Frank Miller, known Will Kane, and now knows Harvey Pell.

In her first English speaking role ... Katie Jurado captures the multiple layers within Helen Ramirez.

It's been one year ... without seeing you.

I know.

Grace Kelly's Amy Fowler is no less proud and independent.

And though it didn't end up in the finished film ... Amy's Independence is made plain in the shooting script.

Amy Fowler goes from rather good natured bride ... to a woman taking charge ... of her life.

Grace Kelly's performance has never been fully appreciated ... not even by herself.

I guess she felt kind of awkward and it's not an easy role.

I think that she thought she could have done more with it because it was her first feature film.

The scenes between Helen Ramirez and Amy Fowler are intense ... ... richly textured.

Helen ... and not Amy has a keener understanding of Will Kane and why he's really staying.

It's very clear in this movie that Helen totally understands Will.

And Amy doesn't.

From the very beginning, Amy just doesn't know why he doesn't run away.

I don't understand you ... no matter what you say.

If Kane was my man.

I never leave him like this.

I 'd get a gun.

I'd fight.

Why don't you?

He's not my man.

He's yours.

They have a marvelous three line exchange, Helen and Will.

Where she says ... he's about to go out the door.

And she says, Kane, if you're smart, you'll get out, too.

And he looks at her and in Cooper's inimitable delivery says, I can't.

And she says ...

I know.

I know if you're smart, you will get out too.

I can't.

I know.

And it's done, of course, in a minimum of dialog ... cause that's the way you can do it when the script is this good.

Well I can't do it.

Why not?

If you don't know.

It's no use me telling you.

It's telling that his line.

If you don't know, it's no use to be telling you ... is echoed almost word for word ... by Helen Ramirez to Amy.

When Amy says, I don't understand why, what's keeping him here?

And what is it?

Why does he stay?

if you don't know, I cannot explain it to you.

It's the same line.

It's the same thing Kane is saying.

These two are really on the same wavelength.

Which raises the obvious question?

Why does Will Kane forsake this sexy ... passionate, beautiful, smart, tough, understanding ... loyal, wonderful babe ... for this little Virginal.

Blond who doesn't get it?

You win, but don't ever marry a Quaker.

She'll have you running a store.

I can't picture you doing that Will.

I can.

So Can I ... And a good thing too.

The ultimate answer to that is, of course, what Will Cain ... What the Westerner ... is looking for ... ...

is not the woman who understands him ...but the future of civilization ... progress, education, peace ... running the store ... the eastern woman who doesn't understand violence.

He wants to change to that.

So he marries Amy because he wants to change lifestyles ... as opposed to reasserting the way he's always lived.

It seems to me that people ought to be alone ...

When they get married ...

I know I'm going to try ... Amy.

I'll do my best.

Though Amy represents this future for Will.

A world within the community ...

It's not a world without cost.

How can you leave him like this?

Does the sound of guns frighten you that much?

No, Mrs. Ramirez.

I've heard guns ... My father and my brother were killed by guns.

They were on the right side, but they didn't help them.

Even when the shooting started.

My brother was 19.

I watched him die.

That's when I became a Quaker.

I don't care who's... right or who's wrong.

There's got to be some better way for people to live.

Amy is ... makes a point out of saying she has come to her beliefs by watching her brother and father be shot.

And it doesn't, as she puts it.

It doesn't matter who is right or who's wrong.

There's got to be a better way.

And we and Kane, of course, agree with the second half.

There does have to be a better way.

Unfortunately, there isn't yet.

And it does matter who's right and who's wrong.

For if Amy has learned firsthand the horrible cost of violence.

It is only when she hears the gunshots which might have killed her husband ... that she learns firsthand the horrible cost of avoiding violence.

When Amy at last picks up a gun ... she understands what Will ...

Knew all along.

Will Kane stands at the center of High Noon ... ... rich complex ... an outsider ...

seemingly neither nor within Hadleyville's, societal strata.

He's an outsider in the saloon.

I'll take all I can get.

You all must be crazy coming in here to raise a posse.

Frank's got friends in this room and in the church.

You don't come to this church very often, Marshall.

And when you got married today, you didn't see fit to be married here.

And if he is at ease with his bride ... ... he's also at ease with Helen Ramirez.

Kane has not endeared himself to all of Hadleyville.

There's plenty of people around here think he's got a comeuppance coming.

And wasn't perhaps shy about using his fists back when.

You had no call to do that.

Resentment still felt.

You're right.

He fully expects to die, which we know because he's written out his last will and testament and wept.

This is not an invulnerable ... ... monolithic hero.

This is a man who ... is expecting death.

Gary Cooper showed that real courage is doing the right thing when you're terrified ... when you're fully aware of the consequences.

It was almost like he hadn't read the script and didn't know if you were going to live.

But he did the right thing anyway.

So to me, he was stronger and more powerful.

Even with this.

Will Kane is not your everyday Western hero.

This is no self-righteous smash mouth tough guy.

Cooper is actually playing two different roles.

When he's with others, he never permits himself to have doubts.

Show fear ... act vulnerable.

That masculine facade is always there.

However, when Kane is alone ... the camera catches him off guard without his masculine mask.

Here's another man entirely.

Angry, frustrated ... fearful, bitter, and finally ... downright frightened.

Fortunately, they had a very secure leading man.

As Fred Zinnemann said ...

I do not remember that Cooper had asked for any major changes in the dialog or the presentation of Will Kane.

Fear does not diminish manhood ... our strength.

If you face it, turn into it, own up to it, and then go beyond it.

That's the genius of the movie.

Here's the Marshal's office.

Noon is approaching.

He's all alone.

And then a few minutes, he knows going to die.

It says something about Cooper as an actor.

Not many male performers ... ... would be comfortable doing a scene like that.

Can you imagine John Wayne in a Western writing his last will and testament ... and breaking down and weeping on it?

This is a such a moment of extraordinary vulnerability.

And there's a witness, there's a young boy who looks up to Will and is caught ... in this awkward ... watching this awkward act.

Not sure how to respond.

And then Will becomes aware that the boy is there.

And in this wonderful reaction that Cooper gives us ... Will sits up ... and composes himself ... And it's as if he's getting his conventionally masculine skin back on.

And Cooper does a few things like this and becomes very kind of prim and ... more repressed in the way that a conventional male would be.

It's one of these scenes which is offended many Western purists.

Howard Hawks and John Wayne were so offended by High Noon that they allegedly made Rio Bravo in response.

When the movie first came out, there was a group in Hollywood that were outraged, was outraged by the movie and felt it was extremely anti-American and led by John Wayne and Howard Hawks.

They were outraged by the fact that the Marshal threw his star down in the dust and that he was vulnerable ... and he showed weakness and Howard Hawks said years later that he made Rio Bravo in answer to the Marshal ...

In High Noon.

There's the story about Howard Hawks making Rio Bravo because he wanted to correct this image of a Marshal who gets into trouble and cries and ... goes to other people looking for help and Hawks felt like this was not something that was permissible to have within the Westerns.

The thing makes it a great movie and I know that John Wayne hated it and Rio Bravo was made in reaction to it.

I understand that.

But the thing that made it a great movie was that Cooper was like you and me, and he rose above his fear.

He was terrified.

And he did the right thing anyway.

That's the universal appeal of the movie, because we don't pretend that he's some superhero that never had any fear.

But no one in any sense wants to fight a gang of gangsters by themselves.

Any real law enforcement professional today could tell you that.

It's a very strange point of view because it's sort of it's a represents sort of just dumb machismo.

And it's at its crudest.

In fact, Will Kane does not ask for help from just anyone.

He's hoping to use the same men he'd used five years earlier.

Some of you were special deputies ... when we broke this bunch.

I need you again ... Now.

Indeed.

He turns down help.

He rejects the possibility of help from four different people.

Three of them ... ... because he thinks it's not right ... even though he desperately needs help.

And one ... because it's conditional.

And by definition ... that's not right.

He rejects, of course ... the teenage boy because he doesn't want to be responsible for his getting killed just because he's a good kid and wants to help him.

He rejects the old one eyed drunk because he thinks he'll get killed and he doesn't want that to happen.

Even though Jimmy the drunk want just a second chance, rejects Herb, who originally volunteers and then reneges.

And of course, there's Harvey.

Sure, I want you to stick.

But I'm not buying it.

It's got to be up to you.

Critics and actors have praised Cooper's powerful, emotionally naked performance.

Here's Daniel Day-Lewis ...

I love the purity and the honesty.

I love Gary Cooper in that film.

High Noon means a lot to me.

The level of vulnerability with Cooper was I think, unmatched.

They'll just come after us.

The four of them ... ... and we'd be all alone on th We've got an hour.

What's an hour?

Or we could ... What's a 100 miles?

We'd never be able to keep that store Amy.

If you had the thought inside your mind, that thought should come through your eyes and that should convey the message even more than the dialog.

The way the camera finds the emotion in the actor.

And that's different from being on stage and projecting it to an audience.

It's feeling it inside ... and knowing how to show it to the camera.

And that's what Cooper was so superb at.

Cooper had a very spare style as an actor.

He didn't do a lot.

He didn't visibly do a lot on screen.

And it's it's probable that a naive observer ... a director who didn't know what they were doing would watch him ... in a scene and think ... that he wasn't doing enough.

But then you would see the film, you would see those rushes and you would know how much he was giving you.

There's a difference sometimes between the way the eye will read a scene in terms of lighting or performance and what the camera is picking up.

I remember meeting Lloyd Bridges some years ago and he I gather this a story he told quite often when he was working on High Noon with Cooper.

He at first was really disconcerted by the fact that he said he said ...

He said I wasn't getting anything from him.

He said he was just a piece of wood ... and there was nothing emanating from Cooper at all.

And I was trying ... to act with him ... and it was as if he didn't even know I was there.

And what he finally realized, he said, was that Cooper understood where the camera was.

In addition ... to where the other actors were, and he knew that this was being photographed.

It wasn't on stage.

And his job was to act for the camera.

It was the other actors job to assume that he knew what he was doing ... and ... when Bridges understood that ... he said, I understood it the first day when I went to see the dailies, because on screen the performance was just amazing.

You could see the terror bleeding out of Cooper's eyes.

The camera picked that up.

A week into production, Foreman told Cooper that he'd been a member of the Communist Party and was under HUAC investigation.

To Foreman's relief, Cooper told Foreman he would do whatever he could to support him.

Forman had only to ask.

I know my father spoke so highly about him.

Of course, he loved his.

... he loved his work ... and ... he believed in him as a human being.

And he certainly was not about to let Carl down.

One of the interesting things that sort of came out of of the movie and the simultaneous blacklisting of Foreman, this sort of very odd, you know, alliance between, you know, the ex-communist and the and the Rock-Red-Republican.

Production went well ... the first two weeks.

One of the wonderful experiences I remember was being on the set when they were filming High Noon.

My father and Grace Kelly come out and they jump into the buckboard and drive off.

Well of course, jumping into the buckboard probably took 2 hours for various reasons.

The horses ... bucked and shied and the wagon was in the wrong place ... and an airplane went over, you know the usual.

The usual thing.

It was a great deal of fun to be on that street.

It was quite fascinating.

The backlot street ... which ... by the way ... it was kind of ...

a generic western street.

It was used in a lot of films.

And Fred Zinnemann, I remember, told me, Well, we stripped it down and we Hawaiianized it.

And that was the street in From Here to Eternity.

It was the same ....

It was the same one.

There was also an especially interested observer.

There was this kid always hanging around ... just off the edge of the set.

And he said ...

This kid was watching me.

And watching me and watching me.

And I'd look up at him, be there And I'd look up and me here.

And walking to the parking lot, there was this kid.

My father said, you know, it was Jimmy Dean.

And then ... Carl Foreman was named by a friendly witness as a former member of the Communist Party.

Immediate pressure was put on Stanley Kramer to fire Foreman.

Kramer resisted, but the pressure increased.

Kramer's long relationship with Foreman unraveled.

As outside pressure increased, Cooper publicly defended Foreman: Calling him the finest kind of American.

Foreman's politics were his business and his alone.

He offered to testify before HUAC on Foreman's behalf, but character witnesses weren't permitted.

This is Carl Foreman.

In a letter to Daily Express journalist David Lewin telling of post testimony events.

Gary Cooper was immediately subjected to a violent underground pressure campaign aimed at getting him to leave the film.

He was told if he didn't leave the film, he'd be blacklisted.

But Coop believed in me and he believed in the film.

He saw it through.

The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, led by John Wayne, demanded that Kramer take Foreman's name off as screenwriter.

Kramer removed Foreman's name as screenwriter.

Cooper and Zinnemann confronted Kramer and threatened to walk off the film if Foreman's name was removed as screenwriter.

Foreman's name stayed.

It would be the last time his name appeared as screenwriter for many years.

And Cooper had ... personally behaved so well to my father during the making of High Noon, when he was subpoenaed by the committee.

And I mean this maybe hindsight, but he certainly felt afterwards that was exactly the, you know, Cooper's own personality somehow dovetailed with with Kane's in a way.

That was absolutely right.

Foreman appeared before the committee just as the third week of filming began.

He refused to name names, and he refused to take the Fifth.

Foreman had been aware for months that he was going to be called to testify and had rewritten parts of the script to reflect what he was going through.

Yet, were that all High Noon had going for it... A cry against the hypocrisy of the McCarthy era.

It would have had little relevance for audiences today.

Audiences only dimly aware of HUAC and the McCarthy era.

What makes High Noon timely ... so remarkably relevant ... is its treatment of civic complacency.

What happens to a town, a society, a country when its citizens refuse to stand up for the community?

There's a profound ambivalence about ... you know ... not just about the state ... but about what America what people owe the community Hign Noon demonstrates the paradox behind a government of laws...

Because in the end, these laws, democracy are nothing but words on paper.

Unless the community stands behind them.

No time for a lesson in civics, my boy.

In the fifth century B.C., the citizens of Athens ... having suffered grievously, under a tyrant managed to depose and banish him However, when he returned some years later with an army of mercenary, those same citizens not only opened the gates for him but stood by while he executed members of the legal government.

...Similar thing happened about eight years ago.

In a town called Indian Falls.

I escaped death only through the intersation of a lady of somewhat dubious reputation.

I think that that has that has tremendous resonance, you know.

It's a sort of you know, the American experiment in an American political culture It's not but it's not one that always works.

Helen Ramirez best nails this high cost of civic complacency.

You want to know why I'm leaving?

Then listen.

Kane will be a dead man in half an hour, and nobody is going to do anything about it.

And when he dies, this town dies too.

No matter whether you see it as pro or anti McCarthyite, pro or anti-communist, what's really the issue there is is of the sheriff, Will Kane ... trying to arouse a community to, allow him to defend it.

Maybe some of you already know it.

But if you don't, it looks like Frank Miller is coming back on the noon train.

Everybody in the town has come face to face with their own failings as human beings, as neighbors, as Americans, as members of a community.

They've had to confront their cowardice thier craveness their unwillingness to stand up for what they know is right, even when they know it's right.

Do you want to be a widow?

Is that what you want?

No Sam.

High Noon demonstrates the paradox behind a government of laws, because in the end, these laws democracy are nothing but words on paper.

Unless the community stands behind them.

I can't listen to any more of this.

What's the matter with you people?

Don't you remember when a decent woman ... couldn't walk down the street in broad daylight?

Don't you remember when this wasn't a fit place to bring up a child?

How can you sit here and talk and talk and talk like this?

High Noon is a movie that that really speaks to some fundamental issues in the idea of America.

Ideas about the relationship of the responsible individual to a community in crisis and what's the appropriate response?

Most Westerns trumpet the spirit of rugged individualism, which High Noon certainly does in the persona of Will Kane.

High Noon is... it encapsulates some very basic American sort of conflicts about ... between individualism and conformity.

You know, things are very much things go right to the heart of the culture, you know.

You know, we live in America that has always been a sort of a self-made community.

But within the spirit of the rugged individual.

There are lines buried a dark side, the side of catering only to yourself.

Undercutting the very idea of community.

In the land of the individual, the self reigns ... self-interest ... the norm.

Look, this is just dirty little village in the middle of nowhere.

Nothing that happens here is really important.

Now.

Get out.

There isn't time.

What a waste.

Good Luck.

The good citizens.

And I'm putting the word good in quotation marks of Hadleyville.

Not only know their own disgrace, but they know each others.

High Noon offers no solace for the viewer.

Unlike so many Westerns in which the community finally steps up to help in High Noon, the community does not help.

It's a bleak, dark ending.

A community has died.

Democracy in its wake.

It's not just blazing triumph.

We've killed the bad guys all as well.

Buys the town and makes them kill the citizen.

People will do this.

It is a very cynical view of human nature.

Very dark one.

Very bleak one.

John Wayne continued his public campaign against High Noon.

He even warned Cooper that his career would be finished if he didn't walk off the film.

Wayne went so far to call High Noon the most un-American movie ever made.

As Wayne continued vilifying Foreman after High Noon finished shooting.

Cooper continued his public support.

Cooper and my father formed a company together at the end of High Noon and it was really a gesture of amazing generosity and courage by Cooper because Foreman was already blacklisted by then.

Outside pressure was immediately put on Cooper.

Back out or your career is over.

Foreman realized they would never get a film made and released Cooper from any obligations.

No point in his career being destroyed too Foreman finally moved to London.

Foreman remained forever grateful for Cooper's support.

Coop put his whole career on the block, in the face of the McCarthyite witch hunters.

He was the only big one who tried.

The only one.

From then on ... Foreman always sent Cooper his scripts for first refusal... ... including Bridge on the River Kwai ...

The Key and Guns of Navarone.

Cooper's age and failing health forced him to bow out ... ... of all three.

Though High Noon ... opened to almost universal praise in late July 1952.

One of its early previews ... had proved disastrous.

What was wrong with the preview was that ... there that was wall to wall music in it and what people were responding to ... All the executives were forming into little groups, whispering and I just went into the bathroom where two other executives were, and I heard one of them say to the other, Well, you know what does a European Jew know about making Westerns anyway?

Controversy has reigned over the decades about .... Who 'saved' Hign Noon.

Many of those involved Stanley Kramer, Elmo Williams ... Dimitri Tiomkin, have taken credit at one time or another.

There was some talk which was ... is not true ...that ... the clocks were put in at the end after the preview to ... to give it more dramatic impetus But that is not true.

The clocks were always part of the movie from the inception.

Fred Zinnemann ... then nearing 90 ... was still alive in London.

He sent me a copy of a Director's Annotated copy of the script, and the script shows how they use the clock in a way that made the movie just excruciatingly tense and effective.

While it's impossible today to nail down just what happened between the poorly received April preview and High Noon's opening a mere three months later, perhaps Fred Zinnemann best summed it up in a letter to Maria Cooper.

My dear Maria, as promised, I'm sending you a few Xerox copies you may find interesting.

They pertain to the High Noon business.

I hoped that the record would be set straight someday, but wanting to avoid unpleasant public disputes which might have hurt the picture, I kept silent for many years while that insidious campaign grew into a myth.

What made me feel that enough is enough ... was a question by my French colleague, the director, Bertrand Tavernier who asked me if it was true that High Noon had been made in the cutting room.

Carl Foreman's screenplay of High Noon ... was constructed like a huge jigsaw puzzle or a mosaic with lots of small pieces, many quite meaningless in themselves, and making sense only when fitted into an exactly preplanned space next to other neutral pieces.

It also meant that much of the film, which closely followed Carl Foreman's script, was, to some extent, camera cut.

While there is no question that the final editing was brilliant, there was not much elbow room for alternatives or for major structural changes, as most scenes were frozen in their places by the progression of time clearly shown on various clocks.

Thus, the picture could make sense only in the form originally intended by Forman and myself.

Best regards Fred Zinnemann.

Though High Noon was considered the favorite to win the Academy Award as Best Picture politics reared its head and the Greatest Show on Earth was named Best Picture.

Neither Forman nor Zinnemann were honored.

Cooper and Anthony Quinn were shooting Blowing Wild in Mexico during the Academy Awards in March of 1953 Cooper and Quinn, who had earned best supporting actor for his role in Viva Zapata that year, both remained in Mexico.

When Cooper told Quinn that he'd asked John Wayne to accept his Oscar, if he won.

Quinn was stunned, After what he did?

A man of dry British wit, Cooper said ... What's the S.O.B.

going to say if I win?

Well, Cooper did win, and John Wayne did accept the award and demonstrated a rather selective memory.

I'm going to go back and find my business manager and agent, producer and three name writer and find out why I didn't get High Noon instead of Cooper.

Elmo Williams also won for editing, and Dimitri Tiomkin earned two Oscars for Best Song and Best Score.

High Noon has stayed with me for over 50 years now and enriched my life and reminded me that courage is not the absence of fear.

It is perseverance ... in the face of fear.

I think it probably resonates to all of us who have many High Noons in our lives.

Today.

High Noon has lost none of its power to move audiences.

It continues to resonate across the spectrum among politicians ... among critics ... among academics ... and, most importantly ...

among the moviegoing public ... of whatever age ... and whatever political persuasion.

High Noon: A simple little Western.

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