Arkansas Society for Cinema and Television Production (ASCTP)

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contact: Gary William Jones gary@jonesfilmvideo.com

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RTV 3303-001 Spring 2010 Class #9 High Noon (1952)

In the 1950’s the long shadow of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) fell across Hollywood. Both High Noon and A Face in the Crowd represent narrative films that use popular entertainment to make a political statement.

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Hall, Philip, ed. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s, 2008.

Frank Zinneman’s film is at once a great suspense Western and a stark allegory of the climate of fear and suspicion prevailing during the McCarthy era. (p. 273)

http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0044706/awards

1953

•	Won, Oscar
	Best Actor in a Leading Role Gary Cooper • Gary Cooper was not present at the awards ceremony. John Wayne accepted on his behalf.
•	Won, Oscar
	Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture Dimitri Tiomkin
•	Won, Oscar
	Best Music, Original Song Dimitri Tiomkin (music), Ned Washington (lyrics) • For the song "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')"
•	Won, Oscar
	Best Film Editing Elmo Williams, Harry W. Gerstad
•	Nominated, Oscar
	Best Writing, Screenplay Carl Foreman
•	Nominated, Oscar
	Best Picture Stanley Kramer
•	Nominated, Oscar
	Best Director Fred Zinnemann

http://pro.imdb.com/title/tt0044706/trivia

The movie is often described as "a western for people who don't like westerns".

In 1951, after 25 years in show business, Gary Cooper's professional reputation declined, and he was dropped from the Motion Picture Herald's list of the top 10 Box Office performers. In the following year he made a big comeback at the age of 51 with this film.

This film was intended as an allegory in Hollywood for the failure of Hollywood people to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Sen. Joseph McCarthy Red-baiting era.

The pained expression on Kane's (Gary Cooper's) face throughout the film was not acting; Cooper had a bleeding ulcer at the time.

They used little to no makeup on the face of Gary Cooper, to show his lines and show how worried he was.

Gary Cooper was reluctant to do his big fight scene with Lloyd Bridges, as he was suffering from back pain at the time.

There was some question as to the casting of Gary Cooper, since he was 50 and Grace Kelly, playing his wife, was only 21.

(Cooper was a notorious womanizer and was having an affair with Kelly-- an adventurous young lady with a penchant for older leading men-- during the production. That could also help account for how tired Cooper looked on film. Way to go, Coop. J)

Bill Clinton's all-time favorite film. He watched it seventeen times during his two terms as President of the United States. (See above behind-the-scenes note. J)

Although the picture takes place between 10:35 a.m. and 12:15 p.m.. slightly longer than the 84-minute running time, this was due to the re-editing ordered by Stanley Kramer and Fred Zinnemann, both of whom were unhappy over the first assemblage. Editor Elmo Williams experimented by using the final portion of the material shot and condensed it to exactly 60 minutes of footage timed to real-time in the film. Thus the film we see is Williams' experimental version, which met with both Kramer's and Zinnemann's approval.

Although John Wayne often complained that the film was "un-American", when he collected Gary Cooper's Best Actor Oscar on his behalf at the The 25th Annual Academy Awards he complained that he wasn't offered the part himself, so he could have made it more like one of his own westerns. He later teamed up with director Howard Hawks to make Rio Bravo as a right-wing response.

Gary Cooper, B movie producer Robert L. Lippert and screenwriter Carl Foreman were set to go into a production company together, after the success of this film. John Wayne and Ward Bond ordered Cooper to back out of the deal, as HUAC was preparing to "blacklist" Foreman. Shortly afterward, Lippert was made persona non grata by the Screen Actors Guild, which destroyed his independent production company.

John Wayne strongly disliked this movie because he knew it was an allegory for blacklisting, which he and his friend Ward Bond had strongly and actively supported. Twenty years later he was still criticizing it in his controversial May 1971 interview with Playboy magazine. Inventing a scene that was never in the movie, he claimed Cooper had thrown his marshal's badge to the ground and stepped on it. He also stated he would never regret having driven blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman out of Hollywood.

Until his death, director Fred Zinnemann fought not to have this film colorized, saying that he designed it in black and white and that it should be shown that way. He was unsuccessful, however. A colorized version was made by Ted Turner's television production company and was broadcast several times over his several cable outlets.

Writer Carl Foreman was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee shortly after the film came out. In fact, he had fled to England by the time the film was finished.

As Carl Foreman's script bore certain similarities to John W. Cunningham's story "The Tin Star", producer Stanley Kramer bought the rights to Cunningham's novel to protect the production against accusations of plagiarism.

In the fight scene involving Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges, Lloyd's son Beau Bridges, then a youngster, was in the hayloft watching the filming. When water was thrown on his father after the fight, Beau could not help laughing, requiring the scene to be shot a second time. Cooper was not well and in pain but was gracious and understanding, according to Lloyd.

Fred Zinnemann wanted a hot, stark look to the film. Cinematographer Floyd Crosby achieved this by not filtering the sky and having the prints made a few points lighter than normal.

Stanley Kramer removed Carl Foreman's credit as producer. They never spoke to each other again.

Took 28 days to shoot the film. There were 10 days of rehearsal.

Fred Zinnemann's meticulous planning enabled him to make 400 shots in only four weeks.

hey only took between 1-3 takes per scene.

"Do Not Forsake Me, Oh, My Darlin'" was the first Oscar-winning song from a non-musical film.

Much of the film was filmed in the gold rush town of Columbia, CA. Today it is a state park right by Sonora on Highway 49.

Among other accomplishments, the film was a milestone in scoring. It introduced the idea of a theme song to be marketed separately from the movie, and to be a motif for the instrumental score throughout the movie. Tex Ritter--John Ritter's father--sang the song "Do Not Foresake Me", whose lyrics are from the point of view of the hero appealing to his new wife, Amy, to stay with him.

Gary Cooper became a close friend of Carl Foreman during filming, and they continued to correspond for the rest of Cooper's life.

Gregory Peck, an activist liberal Democrat who strongly opposed blacklisting, later said that turning down this film was the biggest regret of his career, although he modestly added that he didn't think he could have played the lead character as well as Gary Cooper did.