The Extras - Gary Cooper Stands Alone in HIGH NOON

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Film Historians Julie Kirgo and Alan K Rode join the podcast to traverse the dusty trails and moral complexities of the timeless Western "High Noon."  The new 4K UHD release from Kino Lorbe...r is highlighted by their new  audio commentaries and we get a preview of their insights into what makes this film so enduring.  Along the way we explore screenwriter Carl Foreman and the Hollywood Blacklist, why Gary Cooper was the right choice for the part of Marshall Will Kane, Katie Jurado's portrayal as a strong, independent Mexican woman, Fred Zinnemann's direction, Floyd Crosby's cinematography, Dimitri Tiomkin's score, and the wealth of character actors that fill out the movie. Purchase links:HIGH NOON 4KUHDHIGH NOON BLU-RAYHIGH NOON: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic - BookAlan K. Rode website Julie Kirgo Facebook The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Dean Butler and I played Almanzo Wilder on the classic TV series, Little House on the Prairie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hi, Tim Millard here, host of The Extras podcast. And today I have two very special guests on with me, Julie Kurgo and Alan K. Roady. They're both authors and audio commentators. They both have an audio commentary on the new upcoming 4k release of High Noon being released by Kino Lorber here in May. So I'm excited to have them on. The new 4k looks terrific and it has a ton of extras on there,
Starting point is 00:00:42 including the commentaries from Julie and Alan. Julie, it's great to see you finally and meet you. Vise versa. Hi. Yeah. You know, what's funny is that I've seen your name on a lot of these releases from Keno and from others. And I think we're Facebook friends and because there's so many people we mutually know,
Starting point is 00:01:03 but we haven't had a chance to do anything together. And so I saw high noon and it had two commentaries. And that was a little bit unusual new commentaries, I should say I thought that was a little bit unusual. I saw Alan K. roadie there, which Alan, you do a lot for them. And then I saw your name. And I thought, Alan, can you reach out to Julie? And let's see if we can do, you know, do a podcast together. I'm so glad you did.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Nothing better for me than to reach out to Julie, because we did. I will always reach out. We did a commentary together on trapped for Flickr Alley that the Fillmore Foundation restored. And we did a commentary, gosh, is it seven or eight years ago? I can't remember on He Walked by Night. He Walked by Night, one of my favorites. One of our favorites.
Starting point is 00:01:57 And we had a lot of fun. In fact, when that was over, I was kind of disappointed. All of a sudden it's like, well, the movie's over. We have to stop having fun. We could have gone out to lunch. Come on. That's true. That's true. What I thought was a little bit unusual is that you did these commentaries, not together, but individually. Which is kind of nice for the fans in a way, because you get two different perspectives. But I wanted to ask you about that. Did either of you know you were doing this? And then when you found out, we were like, what?
Starting point is 00:02:28 Nope. It was a delightful coincidence. In retrospect, I was a little bit nervous because Alan is the king of commentaries. Oh, please. Well, if I'm the king, you're the queen. I mean, so. We're all loyal over here. Well, if I'm the king, you're the queen. I mean, so let's not go there. But I thought it was interesting that we collaborated without collaborating. And as I brought up before, this is like Howard Koch and the Epstein brothers working on Casablanca with Hal Wallis putting the folks in the bicycle wheel and neither one of them actually in
Starting point is 00:03:03 a room together. Never in the same room and neither one of them actually in a room together or talking in the same room but they all contribute it so um hopefully and you know i have not heard either commentary since i recorded mine and i didn't know you had done yours and i'm going to be very curious to see if there's overlap. Oh, I think there is. I think there will be just because of the nature of the- Gary Cooper's grade. There was blacklist stuff. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I had a lot of blacklist stuff and I had, I talked a lot about Katie Girardot because- Hold that thought, Alan. I don't want to go there quite yet. But I loved what you had
Starting point is 00:03:46 to say about her, but I like that a lot. Yeah, I thought her performance, her character was extraordinary. Particularly from 1951. And perfectly performed. And that was her first performance in English. That's right. That was my money. Yeah. There's a lot of firsts on this, which is kind of interesting we'll get to. But before we dive into kind of the specifics, I just wanted to continue kind of this idea of you both doing commentaries.
Starting point is 00:04:16 And I guess what I was thinking is, is this movie must be pretty important to both of you, because you each did this, You each wanted to talk about this film. And I know you both have opportunities to talk about, you know, various films. So you're, you're picking, uh, some of your options. So I want to get from you. Maybe we'll start with you, Julie. Why high noon? Why did you want to do a commentary for high noon? Well, there are a lot of reasons. I mean, I think, you know, obviously aesthetically it's amazing. I mean, I think, you know, obviously, aesthetically,
Starting point is 00:04:45 it's amazing. I am a huge, huge Fred Zinneman fan. I will defend Fred Zinneman morning, noon and night, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, et cetera. I love him. So there's that. And then I'm especially interested in the history of the Blacklist. My dad, George Kiergaard, was a writer and he was president of the Writers Guild for two terms. And his pet project, his hobby horse during that period of time, was to get credits restored to blacklisted writers who had lost them, among them Carl Foreman. So that, you know, sort of genetically passed down to me and I'm very, very interested in that period of history. And the crazy thing about High Noon and its blacklist history, but also what it says thematically, just as a standalone film,
Starting point is 00:05:48 is so pertinent to exactly what we're going through right now. We're sitting here in May of 2024, and what is on our minds? The potential loss of our democracy. Boiled down, that is the central theme of High Noon. Tanner Iskra And of course, you're a writer, Julie, and you're part of the guild. So, last year, there was a writer strike and there's AI. I mean, there's so many things that have to be done all the time to protect writers, their intellectual property and the voice of writers. Julie Penner That's right, Jim. writers, their intellectual property and the voice of writers. So just to give a little background for the listeners, how about you for Alan?
Starting point is 00:06:29 What brought you to this one? Alan Taylor Well, this is one of my favorite movies. It always has been. And if it comes on TV, no matter how many times I've seen it, and I think if my life depended on reciting most of the dialogue with the sound turned off, I could probably do that at this point. But like Julie, I'm very, very much interested in the blacklist period. This sounds like a cliche, but some of my best friends were blacklisted.
Starting point is 00:06:59 Marsha Hunt, Mickey Knox, a lot of people that were touched by that. Julie Garfield is a close friend. So I have a lot of that history. My mother grew up in Hollywood during this period. So you have all of that. And then I'm also a huge Fred Zinneman fan. And the film is just, it's one of those films where you could, if you wanted to write a book and say, I want to write the 20 perfect films, this high noon would certainly be in there. And the casting all the way from, you know, Gary Cooper, who was so much older than Grace
Starting point is 00:07:39 Kelly, who was, and Grace Kelly was so inexperienced, but they make it work. You believe it works perfect but it works perfectly and and Katie Gerardo who really a trendsetting character a trendsetting role ahead of its time and Thomas Mitchell Harry Morgan Lon Chaney jr. Lloyd bridges on and on and on Otto Kruger, that little bit that he does, where he leaves town and he goes, looks at Gary Cooper and says, what a waste.
Starting point is 00:08:12 And when you see this film, you realize the time in which it has been made, so many things haven't changed that much. Carl Foreman, what happened to him with this film, he was the co-producer and was basically pushed out of it, although he got his writing credit. And ironically, the friendly witness Gary Cooper was the only one that really stood up for him and kept him on the helm. I think Cooper's role in general terms in the history of this film is remarkable. I mean, he was in some sense rehabilitated for me because of course what you see a lot of
Starting point is 00:08:56 the time is Cooper in front of Hugh Ack testifying. So you think, uh-oh, bad guy, bad guy. But he never named names. He was just a rock group Republican and a, you know, a self-styled patriot. But when it came down to personal relations, he was solid. He was great. Foreman in later years would say he was the only one who really stood by. Foreman felt that if it had not been for Cooper and Zinnaman, he would not have even had the writing credit. That's correct. And what's interesting, if you read through the transcript of Cooper's testimony, he just did his look down at his feet, kick a pebble, all shucks act for you act, and they were all transfixed because it's like, it's Gary Cooper.
Starting point is 00:09:48 And he told them nothing. He just basically said, I don't like communism. I'm not in favor of it, blah, blah, blah. And he told them nothing. He stood up for Foreman and he didn't name names and so on and so forth. And I respect that. The other thing that I thought was kind of interesting is that, you know, John Wayne, you know, pooh-poohed this film and so did Howard Hawks.
Starting point is 00:10:11 Like, oh, how can you... Oh, he didn't just pooh-pooh it. He said it was the most un-American film ever made. Right, right. And so then he had to go up and accept Cooper's Oscar for him and say, why can't I have a high noon like a little kid asking for ice cream in the middle of his cupboard? Why didn't my uncle give me this part? He actually said that. What a hypocrite.
Starting point is 00:10:31 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think certainly John Wayne was a complicated guy and I won't delve into all of that, but this was really a transformative film. And I guess we can't forget a couple other people, Stanley Kramer, who produced it. Although one of the things I've noticed about great films, Casablanca, High Noon, is when they are unexpected hits, the Q forms of all the people that take credit for everything and say, I knew all along that that was a Jack Warner trademark. Like lambasting, you're spending too much money, this and that.
Starting point is 00:11:15 And then when the film hit, oh, I knew all along it was going to be great. And so I think you do see some of that in High Noon. And I do think that Elmo Williams deserves credit for the editing and the cutting and so on and so forth. And he won an Oscar. But the thing that bugs me about Elmo Williams is he says things like, all those shots of the clocks, I put them in there. They're in the screenplay.
Starting point is 00:11:42 I know. I've read the script. They're in the screenplay. As usual, I've read the script. They're in the screenplay. As usual, everybody's taking credit for what the writer did. Correct. Correct. And that is typical.
Starting point is 00:11:52 And I think Elmo lived to be 102 and 103. So when you're the last person standing, it's kind of like Kirk Douglas saying, he broke the blacklist with Spartacus. It's a finish line with a tape you run through. Auto-Kreminger would argue about that. Yeah, Lee Grant would argue about that, who is still with us, God bless her. So there
Starting point is 00:12:18 is a habit with older people when you tell a story so many times, I think you come to believe it. And I think a lot of people in the instances we're talking about it are very sincere, and I don't want to badmouth them or mitigate their contributions. But with legendary films, legendary stories about the making of the films do take on what someone used to say to me when I was in the Navy, like, what's the procedure for this? And I'd say, it's done in accordance with established folklore. And so there is some of that associated with High Noon, but that doesn't take away the fact that it's a great film. It's an iconic film, to use a something that's become beyond a cliche. And, and it also
Starting point is 00:13:09 validates my only rule about movies. And that is, if it's a movie and Harry Morgan is in it, it's always worth watching. I agree. Yeah. Hey, I wanted to go to the writing itself and Carl Foreman, because I know that in watching a number of the extras that were on this release, in listening to your commentaries, and just an overall kind of academic breakdowns of this film, you can't not talk about the blacklist.
Starting point is 00:13:41 But setting that aside for a minute, I just want to talk about the movie itself. And I know you can't separate it because the writer comes back and puts that into the storyline, but he did have a draft maybe that really got Fred Zinneman interested in this that maybe didn't have as much of that kind of linkage. But I think it probably still had this concept of time, real time, and other things that
Starting point is 00:14:08 when Zinnaman read it, he immediately gravitated to it and said this has the potential at least to be a great film. Talk a little bit about the actual writing because to me, if you strip everything else away, the actors, everything else, this script alone would just be a fabulous read. It's incredible and I agree with you that the real time factor was pretty much unique. I mean, Alan, you might know this more than I, but I can't think of another film that operated in real time in the way that... I can think of one, The Setup, by Robert Wise, because that starts with the clock outside
Starting point is 00:14:52 the boxing arena. And when it ends, it shows the real time that's expired as Robert Ryan is laying there, beaten up, being ministered by Audrey Todder. So there's a little precedent, but to use this in a Western motif, and to make the hero someone that is a reluctant hero, to say the least, and he's doing this out of a sense of doing the right thing, even though it's going to break up his marriage, everyone runs away from him. He's probably gonna get killed That whole motif was very very unique and I believe a foreman adapted that from a short and a magazine article and
Starting point is 00:15:36 One of the interesting things and I can't even remember if I mentioned this in my commentary Richard Flesher worked with Carl Foreman on a picture in 49 called The Clay Pigeon, an RKO B movie about Japanese spies and Bill Williams having amnesia from World War II, the classic noir trope. And they drove back and forth together at the studio. They were close friends for quite some time. They talked about the high noon thing and making it into a movie and so on and so forth. The story, by the way, was from Collier's and it was called The Tin Star. Right. Correct. In fact, I think the story that Foreman's son tells is that Foreman started to formulate this idea and, peace to you,
Starting point is 00:16:28 Tim, he did have the idea of the blacklist in mind at the very beginning, although it came out more and more during the course of his writing several drafts of the screenplay. He was on the screenwriter's skilled board and was the final holdout, as I understand it, about an implementation of a loyalty oath. He didn't want to... Yeah, although he did sign the loyalty oath and mentioned that in his testimony before HUAC. The other thing is he had been subpoenaed before the movie even began production production and he testified during production.
Starting point is 00:17:08 So he was so intimately connected that it's crazy. However, Foreman's son, who by the way was born in England because Carl Foreman had to leave the country after he was blacklisted and go and live in England, Carlforman's son said that he had begun to formulate the story and then he read the Tin Star. He thought, God, have I read this before because there are a lot of similarities. So he talked to Kramer and Kramer, just to be safe, be on the safe side, bought the rights to the story. So there was that influence, which that was just a Western story, straight up Western story, nothing to do with the blacklist. And then as he proceeded, what happened was
Starting point is 00:17:55 he actually said, you know, it was insane. The more things went on in my personal life, the more I felt like I was becoming like the Gary Cooper character. So it was a real intermeshing of his, you know, desire to do a Western. And you know, as far as Zinnaman is concerned, and Zinnaman loving the script immediately, loving this material, Tim, as you said. For me, it's a kind of an act Zinaman theme, which is, you know, the lonely man struggling against all these forces that surround him. I mean, Man for All Seasons, anyone? Even From Here to Eternity, which was the following year, the Montgomery Cliff character, my God, It's the same deal. That is a Zinnaman theme par excellence.
Starting point is 00:18:49 I remember Marcia Hunt told me she was in Zinnaman's first film that he directed called Kid Glove Killer. And she said, you know, this was the era of MGM where the producers ruled the directors, you know, you were told what to do, you were told what to be in. And she said on the first day of Kid Glove Killer with Van Heflin, he gathered the whole crew and cast around and said, this is my first picture, so I really would appreciate any input, anybody who has anything that would add that would make the picture better, I'm more than willing to listen. Everyone was thunderstruck because directors in
Starting point is 00:19:27 1942 at the studio system didn't do that. I think Zinnaman was a thematically, I think you're right on the mark, Julie. Also, he was a very collaborative director and very, very easy and he saw something. I mean, you can't say Fred Zinneman was a Western director. No. You know, this was not George Sherman directing this piece.
Starting point is 00:19:53 He saw... Or even not a Hawks, not a Ford. No, no, no. He saw something in this that resonated with him. He saw what Foreman was trying to do and was simpatico with it, which really makes the whole film unique. Yeah, I mean, the impact of this film,
Starting point is 00:20:13 if you say to somebody, at least of a certain age, high noon, I mean, you immediately think of, oh, okay, this is gonna come down to some point of decision. You know, in a corporate meeting or some someplace or in politics, hey, high noon, you know, that means we're going to have to make a decision. We have to make a moral stand on something. And not just making a stand, but with all the forces arrayed against you. It's going to be tough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:51 Anyway, it's true. I just think that the writing is just so superb. And it's just the foundation for everything, obviously. Julie, you mentioned in your commentary something about that I found interesting. You called High Noon like an indie film. And I think that's about the production and how it came together and the financing. Maybe you could expand on that a little. Well, the Stanley Kramer Company, SK Company, was an independent that made deals with various big companies, studios. And in fact, as I recall, and Alan, correct me if I'm wrong, I that high noon was released by united artists and the stanley creamer company also with. Kramer himself is sort of the head honcho executive producer producer very much involved. He also hired a bunch of people that he worked with again and again one of them being carl foreman.
Starting point is 00:21:47 one of them being Carl Foreman and Zinnaman. The three of them had all made The Men just a year or two earlier, which was Marlon Brando's first film. There's another Zinnaman theme, a single man with his battle against the forces around him. In this case, it's Brando playing a paraplegic and trying to come to terms with that after World War II. My pal Nick Erdman was in that movie and told me about it, The Men. He told us about going to a pizza joint out in the valley, a restaurant with Brando and Jack Webb. Brando stayed in character and went in as a paraplegic into the pizza restaurant and convinced the waiters and everyone that he was really crippled and so on and so forth. He stayed in character. Well, he was crippled inside, as we all know. Anyways, they made Champion, which was more
Starting point is 00:22:36 of a hit than The Man, I'll tell you. Oh, yeah. So High Noon, in a way, was almost like an afterthought. It was the last picture that they owed to United Artists at the time. And it had no budget. Its budget was under a million dollars. And that included $100,000 just for Cooper. And that was Cooper taking a major cut in his salary. Yeah. in his salary. Yeah, Cooper had, post World War II, he had made some films that weren't very successful.
Starting point is 00:23:10 Bright Leaf, which is an interesting film that Curtiz directed with Patricia Neal, and he was also in this torrid love affair with Pat Neal. I don't know whether he had moved out of his house at that time, but he wasn't going to divorce his wife, Rocky, and vice versa. So his personal life is rather tumultuous, and he needed a hit. I mean, he needed High Noon, and obviously he saw something in it. In fact, if memory serves, Zinneman did a week or two weeks of rehearsal, and originally Gary Cooper wasn't there because his contract said he didn't have to come to rehearsals.
Starting point is 00:23:48 And they had the cast and the crew off lines. Inman was rehearsing them. And I don't think anyone was being paid. And they all participated. When Cooper found out they were doing this, he joined the rehearsals because he was the star and he wanted to be part of this. And he didn't care whether he got paid or not, which kind of speaks to his character and his belief in Inu.
Starting point is 00:24:09 Well, I have a question for you guys on that because when I'm reading about it and I'm listening to your commentaries about this film, the budget's low, but was it low compared to the other Kramer productions or was that roughly his budget? I think it was in line with his budget. It's not like, oh, this is my last film. I don't want to overspend on this. He still believed in the project. He just didn't have that much money.
Starting point is 00:24:36 He just had his budget there. I think he believed in it, Tim, but he also had a lot going on. He had signed this deal with Harry Cohn to make pictures and release pictures through that. This was a result of Champion being a big success. Harry Cohn, always with the eye for a bargain, but Harry Cohn wasn't going to throw millions of dollars at anybody. Harry Cohn threw nickels around like manhole covers. So the budgets on these films were going to be a million, a million and a half, maybe two million, something like that. But then on the other hand, Harry Cohn paid the highest price for a property for a play ever paid for Born Yesterday because he believed in it and he actually outbid Louis
Starting point is 00:25:26 B. Mayer and MGM for Born Yesterday. So obviously Harry had his moments, but I think Stanley Kramer, when all of this stuff happened with the blacklist and everything, and Carl Foreman, and there's a story that I tell in the commentary that when he basically signed and got his payment and they broke up their company because Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman were partners in this production company and they broke it up. He walked Foreman walks down Fine Street to the Brown Derby to have a drink and who's sitting at the table?
Starting point is 00:26:01 The UAC investigator Bill Wheeler and Lloyd Bridges. So it's kind of like, how do you like that? If that didn't drive home to Carl Foreman, the situation that he was in and others were in that you have to break up your partnership because of the blacklist. And then you walk down the street and one of the leading people in your movies is sitting in the Brown Derby having a drink with the UAC investigator. So that- But I want to be clear about this.
Starting point is 00:26:32 Lloyd Bridges was, he was also under investigation, wasn't he? Yes, he was. And what he did was Lloyd went to this attorney named Martin Gang, who was- Famous. Or infamous. went to this attorney named Martin Gang, who was... Amos. You're infamous. He was the guy who would clear people. And what Bridges did is he had a private session with Wheeler in Lloyd Gang's office on Vine Street.
Starting point is 00:26:58 And Glenn Frankel was nice enough to point me into the archival direction of that. In fact, Julie, I think we talked about this when you and I did Trapped, did the commentary on that, and we discussed this. And Lloyd was put in a position where if he wanted to work, he had to name some names, and he did. And he got cleared. He got cleared. And he continued to work and a lot of people didn't know that at the time because Martin Gang was the lawyer that kind of cleared people
Starting point is 00:27:33 and I think what made Carl Forman unique was the fact that he got cleared without naming any names eventually and he was one of the few, I can't think of anybody else that was able to do that limbo dance that he did. And it's too complex to go into here, but he never formed and never named names and Bridges did. Yeah. By the way, you mentioned Glenn Frankel and I just want to say- Great book. Great book by Glenn Frankel, all about high noon. And the subtitle is The Hollywood Blacklist and the making of an American
Starting point is 00:28:11 classic. Right. So well, there's there's a really recommended. Yeah, there's Glenn Frankel. There's also Michael Blake, who wrote a book on classic Westerns. It includes high noon. And I thank these people, Larry Supplair and of course Victor Nowaski, who wrote the essential naming names. So there's a lot out there where you can put the pieces together on how High Noon was made and also folding in the different stories from the different principles as high noon
Starting point is 00:28:45 became a hit and everyone lined up to say, Oh, you know, it was, you know, everyone wanting, everyone wants their piece of the pie and everyone wants their, their time in the spotlight. And that's a very human thing. And I understand that. Well, I did want to talk about the financing because I find the business part of these things pretty fascinating, especially when it leads to a classic iconic Western like this. It's from a company that I don't think was known for making Westerns. They didn't have huge budgets. It came from a director who's not known for Westerns, a writer. I mean, there's just so much and yet. It's a socially conscious, I'm putting big quotes around that film with that kind of theme and the creators, the filmmakers all had an interest in that.
Starting point is 00:29:37 In that. For sure. So they just now are working in a genre that they're not known for, but they bring those talents and those insides. And those obsessions. Yeah. I think the other thing that's interesting is you had mentioned that it was distributed by United Artists.
Starting point is 00:29:53 Originally, Stanley Kramer took it to Harry Cohn and was going to have Columbia distribute it. And Harry Cohn looked at it and it didn't have the T. Omkin score and the text were to say, and he thought it stunk. He thought it stunk and he passed on it. And then later on when Zinnaman was with Cohn in Hawaii making From Here to Eternity saying, Harry, you certainly screwed up. You could have made $5 million and just tweaked because what director didn't want to make
Starting point is 00:30:22 Harry Cohn suffer a little bit. So, you know, he did that. But of course, Harry Cohn, you know, with all of his crudity and the horror stories about him, his studio during his tenure made money every year. He was a really what Zanuck called a picture man. He was a picture man. He was a really good picture man. And that's why I admire to a certain, to a reasonable extent, Harry Cohn and the Warners
Starting point is 00:30:48 because a lot of times they operated off their gut. They risk everything that they had made to make movies. And you know, the problem with the picture business now, as I see it, is the people who are in the picture business aren't in the picture business. They're in some other business like the leverage buyout business or the pay down debt business or something, but they're not in the business like the old timers were of making movies. That's the business. Yeah. So it's completely different.
Starting point is 00:31:20 Another thing that I was hearing was that there was a large investor in Kramer's productions who was a lettuce farmer who wanted to be in movies. He was an agribusiness gentleman. Which I thought was kind of interesting because anybody who works in indie filmmaking now, you have to find these people. I love that. I love that story. But he's in a condition. You have to find these people. I love that story.
Starting point is 00:31:45 But he's in a condition. He would put in like a third of the budget. He was saying $250,000, but you have to star Gary Cooper. That was his condition. That's correct. I'm glad you brought that up because that's exactly where I was going. And that is the fact that I also read though that Gary Cooper was not necessarily the first choice. I don't know if that's, he was one of a number of actors that were considered. There's never, in these movies, there's very rarely like one choice. They take a
Starting point is 00:32:16 list and they start winnowing it down, you know. I mean, I think Edmund O'Brien was considered. I read Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda. Henry Fonda is the big one, but he was being investigated by Hugh Eck also. I was trying to imagine those actors in the role and I think they could have done a fine job as well. Yeah. Peck had already done a gunfighter, and this was too similar for him. And I think, you know, James Stewart, I also heard, and I think he would have been really interesting. Yeah. But Cooper is perfect. And part of the reason he's
Starting point is 00:32:56 perfect is because of a lot of the factors that were considered marks against him. Too old, sick, factors that were considered marks against him, too old, sick, a little infirm, worn out, minimal. All those things were positive for him. The fact that he's a little bit old. And I always find it hilarious that people talk about how he was so much older than Grace Kelly. Well, look who he was dating in real life, Patricia Neal, who was way younger than he was. I think that age does play into it, particularly the shot where he knows he's gonna have to face him alone
Starting point is 00:33:35 and he's walking down the street of Hadleyville and Zinnerman has the camera pulled back, back, back, back, back, where you see this one solitary figure all alone on the street in the town. And he's not nimble. He's not loosey goosey. No. He's stiff and you feel he's sore.
Starting point is 00:33:55 In fact, Cooper was having horrible back problems. He had a hernia. He had a hernia operation before this, I believe. So he was a great guy on a horse because he grew up riding horses and all of that. But he was no longer a young man. I think he was, how old was he? 1901. So he was like 50, but he was an old 50. Yeah, he was. He was not a 2024 50. Like they say, 50 is the new 35.
Starting point is 00:34:25 No, it's older. For me, this, you're right. For me, the scene where it really shows is where he's writing his last will and testament. And he's obviously, it's one of the subtlest performance. Some people say it's wooden or he's not giving us anything. That is an actor who knew how to play for the camera. And to me, the subtle play of emotions on his face as he's doing this is like he's steely, he's determined, and then his despair and his fear, he lets them somehow show, you know, he's
Starting point is 00:35:08 not sobbing, but he lets us see that his courage is grounded on terror. That's real courage. If you want to know about Gary Cooper talking to other actors who work with him, I remember I did a show with Richard Anderson and I said something about Cooper that was not praiseworthy. It wasn't negative. I thought he was going to hit me. He said, do you know Alan Roady? The reason I became an actor was because of Gary Cooper, and he went on to say extol Cooper.
Starting point is 00:35:48 And then Ernest Borgnein told me about Vera Cruz, and he said, one of the greatest thrills of my life was trading lines with Gary Cooper. He said he was so good, so great, so underrated. The other thing about Cooper is that he was kind of typed as a movie star rather than a very effective movie actor. And Dick Erdman told me he was in a theater troupe, I think it was the Carthage Circle players, and they would do all sorts of improv and with people like Akim Tamaroff and I mean really serious actors and that Cooper would come there and work with them
Starting point is 00:36:32 with Pat Neal. That was when he and Pat Neal were going together and he said, Cooper was an actor. He wasn't just a movie star. He wasn't, for example, George Raft. He was a... Thank God. Yeah, thank God. Poor George. Sorry, George. Can't help you. I think, I mean, because of his age, maybe, to me, when I see that film, somebody too young, you almost think they don't have the gravitas of that kind of backbone that some of these great lines in the movie, whether it be from Katie Girardo, you know, as Helen Ramirez, kind of telling the Lloyd Bridges character, you know, to paraphrase, you'll never be the man he is.
Starting point is 00:37:22 Like, it's not just your broad shoulders that make you a man. A Lloyd Bridges character is the juxtaposition. Yeah. That Cooper has wisdom, principle, he's young and so on and so forth. And I love that line where Katie Girardo says, when are you gonna grow up? I don't like that kind of talk.
Starting point is 00:37:42 Then grow up? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's so good. And I think the Bridges character really brings out the gravitas of Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper that you're talking about. I think it's really good. Of course, me personally, when I watch the movie and I see the Grace Kelly character and I see Helen Ramirez. If I was Will Kane, I would have married Helen Ramirez and lived happily ever after. But it wouldn't have been much of a movie that way. Well, between Gerardo and Kelly, I see what you're saying.
Starting point is 00:38:15 Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, it's hard to see how I understand her principle as a Quaker and all of that, but her disloyalty and her inability to understand what her husband is standing for. And in fact, the same attributes that probably attracted her to Will Cain are those attributes that say, when he says, I can't leave, I gotta go back, I gotta go back. Also, there's a practical side where he says, the two of us alone on the prairie, with these guys after us, what are we gonna do?
Starting point is 00:38:54 What are we gonna do? And at that time he thought he had friends in the town. He says, even if they got to their destination, they'll come and take the store that they're gonna set up. Correct, correct. I mean, he knew there was no running away from this. It's a... And go ahead, Tim.
Starting point is 00:39:10 It's a terrific comment about pacifism and everybody has the right to believe what they believe. But you know, my dad was in the military and I think that when he says that, they're going to keep coming after us. We have to face it. I mean, and I think that's a huge part of why this film resonates. Yeah. Well, I think the pragmatism of that is really relatable. There's that. And then there's
Starting point is 00:39:39 the more kind of integrity part, which I think is what the Katie Gerardo character, Helen, is referring to when the Grace Kelly character is saying, I don't get it. I don't understand. Can you explain to me why he's being like this? And the Helen character says, if you don't know, I can't explain it to you. Exactly. And again, that shows that Helen is far more on Will's wavelength. Yeah. You know, the opening, Julie, don't you think the opening of the film is so special?
Starting point is 00:40:20 Because there's no dialogue and you just see the three bad guys join up and you have that wonderful Tex Ritter theme, Dimitri Tyomkin and so forth and you have that wonderful theme and you see you know Van Cleef and Cheb Woolley and I really have to wrap my brain around the fact that Cheb Woolley wrote and sung Giant Purple People Eaters when I was coming up. And that's the same Sheb Woolley. Huge in the 50s. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:40:51 Yeah. And Lee Van Cleef, who doesn't have a word of dialogue in the entire movie, is so good. All the stuff with Van Cleef, I'm like, and even the way it's shot, Zinnaman gave birth to Leonie. I just feel like there's tense close-ups, tension, tension, and major, major tight, tight close-ups of these sweaty, sculpted faces, including the most sculpted face in cinema, Lee Van Cleave. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:21 And I don't think anybody, there's few actors that had more cruelty in their face than Bob Wilkie. I mean, he just looked malevolent, dangerous. And he was in, you know, I saw him the other day with a whip, beating Richard Boone with a whip and a half-gun will travel episode. He was always- He didn't need the whip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:41:46 Well, let's talk about that score a little bit because Tjomkin's score won several Oscars, along with the score on the song, I should say won Oscars. And you see there's no dialogue, but the song lyrics kind of act like this narration almost, a here's what you're gonna see this is what the story is about. You know I actually talked to John Berlingame who is the Dean of film music. He knows more about film music than you know he's forgotten more about film music than the rest of us now. That's very accurate.
Starting point is 00:42:22 And John said that to his knowledge which which is great, this was the first time... There were songs in movies that became hits. This to his knowledge was the first time a movie theme song became such a huge, popular, top of the charts kind of hit. And Tjampkin, of course, would do it again several times. But this was the start of it. And what gets me is I don't think that was planned. I don't think, you know, subsequently when that kind of song appeared, it was because everybody said, let's do another one like High Noon. Let's let's, you know, do not forsake me.
Starting point is 00:43:06 That worked great. Before that, that kind of thing didn't exist. So it was almost by accident that they stumbled across this great marketing tool in a way. Because follow on Westerns all seem to have a song in them. Yes. Many of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you listen to that music and if you didn't know that this was a Western
Starting point is 00:43:31 you were going to listen to before the lyrics, I mean, just the beginning beats of that score, you wouldn't necessarily think, oh, this is going to be a Western. If you had your eyes closed. I think it was going to be a thriller maybe. Yeah, it has this, I don't know what that sound is, what he used to create that. But then when the lyrics and stuff come in, then you, and the images of the writers.
Starting point is 00:43:57 The music cue for so much of that has to do with the clock. It's synced to the clock. It's perfectly synced to the clock. And then the other cue that Tiomkin wrote is the Helen Ramirez music cue. And, you know, Katie got her own music cue in that, which I think was... He deserved it. And she deserved it. Exactly. So, yeah. And I think you don't know it's a Western until you have Tex Ritter start singing and then you know it's a Western. Although remember that the first person who appears on screen is Lee Van Cleef.
Starting point is 00:44:37 That's right. So in retrospect, we certainly know it's a Western. Yeah. Well, Lee Van Cleef said near the end of his career, I think it was on the he was on the Johnny Carson show and he said, Thank goodness I had beady eyes. He had beautiful kind of like almost quasi Asian eyes. Yeah, we had those. He had those. Sonic. And those cheekbones. What a tartar. Yeah. And his career really is interesting because he kind of dried up in the 60s. And then Mickey Knox said he was at the Polo Lounge drinking on the cuff. He'd been locked out of his apartment. And Sergio Leone was in town and saw him and said, I want to use you.
Starting point is 00:45:21 And that jump started his career again with all the spaghetti Westerns and so on and so forth. So there's something to be something to be said for hanging out in the Polo Lounge, at least in those. I will say Zinnaman must have liked him because you know, in 53, he put him into From Here to Returnity, small part, but he's noticeable. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, they directors in those days, I remember Peter Bogdanovich saying,
Starting point is 00:45:48 boy, it was so much easier to work within the days of Ford and Hawks and Hitchcock. He said everyone was under contract. You didn't have to deal with 12 different agents and deals, and I want my stills to look like this, and so on and so forth and Taking care of yeah, it's all you you it was it was easier for direct plus the fact that the actors If you're under contract unless you were a big star, this is the movie you're gonna be in
Starting point is 00:46:19 You know, you had very very little leverage So I think it's much better for the actors that have control of their careers. But from the director's perspective, I think it's gotten a lot harder. Well, you mentioned the clock and that made me think of the cinematography on this and cinematographer Floyd Crosby. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that because I think that's such a huge part of what makes this different Western. Couldn't agree more.
Starting point is 00:46:52 And it's actually very interesting. I believe that Zinnaman and Crosby knew each other from the 30s when Crosby was working for Robert Flaherty, the great, you know, kind of incomparable documentarian. And then Newt and Norris. Yeah. And I don't think that they had worked as Zinneman and Crosby, I don't think that they had worked together before, but they had been friends.
Starting point is 00:47:21 So they got along like a house of fire, and they had many of the same ideas, which centered around making almost a documentary style for the film. Also, they studied the Matthew Brady photos from the Civil War so that you had this very kind of flat, the lighting was flat, and just everything around it was not very dimensional, which is quite riveting in terms of high noon. You've got these white, white skies and somebody, I can't remember which filmmaker mentioned that it was so great, there was all this smog in the valley in this period. This was the beginning of the real, real smoggy period.
Starting point is 00:48:09 Right. So you've got these very flat white skies. This was shot primarily. The town scenes were shot at the Columbia ranch in Burbank. Right. You can actually see a telephone wire at one point. That's so good. I think it's in that incredible crane shot. Right. You can actually see a telephone wire at one point. I think it's in that incredible crane shot.
Starting point is 00:48:29 The crane shot of Stuart, you can see in the upper left-hand portion of the frame for like a couple frames, you'll see a telephone pole with a wire there really quickly. It doesn't do anything, but if you watch the film enough, you can catch it. But- And it's fun. It's fun, yeah. But your point about clarity is so well taken because in Fred Zinneman's shooting script,
Starting point is 00:48:54 when Cooper goes to his court of the last resort, his mentor, Lon Chaney Jr. Great senior. And do that, Zinneman wrote next to that sequence, fighting to maintain his love and illusion, and in parentheses, he wrote his Flaherty. So the whole relationship between Cooper and Lon Chaney Jr. was transposed by Zinemen as his relationship with Flaherty. I wonder if Zinemen had a moment of disappointment with Flaherty. I wonder if I wonder if cinnamon had a moment of disappointment with Flaherty I hope to be because they were working together on a project that never transpired
Starting point is 00:49:32 Oh, why it never transpired? I don't I I don't know that's been lost to history and Flaherty died in July 1951 Yeah, right around the same time so this was certainly something that was on Zinnaman's mind and certainly he transposed his relationship with Flaherty to the relationship in the movie between Gary Cooper and Lon Chaney Jr. I find that scene so poignant and part of it is because I find Lon Chaney Jr. To be one of the most poignant actors I've ever seen here even in something like the wolf man he's so sad he's so touching. I think I had a sad life he had a very sad life. He was a... Well, I had somebody who worked in the Bel-Air movies.
Starting point is 00:50:32 They would fly from Burbank and go out to Death Valley to make a Western or something. And he said, Lon Cheney Jr. is the only person I've seen in the airport at six o'clock in the morning drunk. Jr. is the only person I've seen in the airport at six o'clock in the morning drunk. He was a terrible alcoholic. There are stories about his upbringing. I don't know how accurate they are. If you look at his life, it was tragic. He was in a lot of inner pain that how many people have we heard of or even know that douse the inner pain with alcohol or some sort of substance. And he was one of those people. And I think, Julie, you're absolutely right. It comes out in his acting and it certainly comes out in his performance. And the whole touch where he tells him, he says, well, you know, I'd
Starting point is 00:51:23 get you killed going down there. He's such a realist. He says, you'd get yourself killed trying to protect me, you know, and he talks about, you think someone with busted knuckles has had arthritis, you know. That's right. His arguments actually seem more real to me, more valid. They're completely logical. They're completely logical. They're more valid than some of the other, yes. And it's set up with a little bit of business when Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper originally leave where they're getting married and they find out that Ian McDonald and the bad guys
Starting point is 00:51:59 are coming to town and they go, Thomas, you get out of here this very minute. And they get in the wagon with their stuff. And then Lon Chaney hits the horse and then he goes like this, you know, you can tell he's an old man, his hands hurt, he has arthritis. And then they go back to that in that final scene between the two of them. And it's very subtle and you might think, never imagine that that would have a payoff later on. Exactly. And that's what I like about Ziniman. He never underestimates the intelligence of the audience. Okay. Now someone else who filmed that scene would have given a close-up of the hand or something to really put it in your face and so on. I always remember that story about Ford and how green was my valley when Moreno era marries
Starting point is 00:52:54 the wrong guy and leaves. You see in the background the guy that she loves and loves her, Walter Pidgeon, the minister standing under a tree by himself. And the cameraman, Arthur Miller, said to Ford, do you want to dolly in and do a close-up of Walter? And Ford said, ah, Jesus, don't you know they just use it? Yeah. 00.00 By the way, that's very interesting also in terms of Zinnaman, who has said many times that High Noon was partly for budgetary reasons, but also because he has such a clear vision. He said that it was camera cut. So,
Starting point is 00:53:36 and again, no diss on Elmore Williams, the editor who did an extraordinary job. But I think probably he didn't have as many choices as he likes to, or as he liked to brag about at the age of 100. So we forgive him. Yeah. But, but so again, back to Zinnaman and Floyd Crosby, I think that the other thing that they were trying to do with this very dramatic, contrasty, if flat cinematography was to kind of suggest maybe subconsciously to those of us who might have seen these photos, these war photos, the Civil War photos, okay? So we know that this is a man who is in combat in a way. But also, you know, it's very, despite the fact that there's, again, for budgetary reasons, not
Starting point is 00:54:33 a lot of scenery beyond that telephone wire. There's this beautiful black and white contrast in that fantastic crane shot. One of the things that strikes you is again, that white, white sky and the white, white dusty road of the town. And then there's Cooper and he is in black and he's like a... You feel... ...calation point. When you see that shot, Julie, you feel hot. Like you want to take a glass of water. You can see Cooper's, probably his mouth is dry and you feel the heat, the isolation and
Starting point is 00:55:13 so forth. He's so isolated and he's the one person on the street. You know, just this one exclamation point of a man. So lean, you know. It's great. Going back to the theme, that was Ned Washington that wrote the lyrics to Oh, I see.
Starting point is 00:55:34 Enough forsaken. Not forsaken, All My Darling. And he also composed When You Wish Upon A Star, My Foolish Heart, and then later he wrote the song for 310 to Yuma, which as we said earlier, replicated it. And he also run one of my favorite TV themes of all time, the rawhide theme. Roll the, I mean.
Starting point is 00:55:57 The guy was a genius, clearly. He was great. And of course, Dimitri Tyomkin, who I met as an infant, because my grandfather was a composer and I was like a baby and my mother, he actually like either, you know, held me or something at my grandfather. He dandled you. My grandfather always said about Dmitri, very talented, but did not suffer from ego deprivation. You know, because he said, Dmitri said that he wrote the high noon ballad and
Starting point is 00:56:26 the score with all my ingenuity. So not just half his ingenuity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that the song was released, the ballad was originally released on a record and it was not sung by Tex Ritter but Frankie Lane when the song was originally released and so on and so forth. And I found in Teomkin's book his memory of the sequencing of events and the credit once again was out of sync with what the facts were. But the version of the record, the film went into general release I think in June of 52, and I'm looking at some notes here, and July 30th, 52, and
Starting point is 00:57:15 a record of the version sung by Ritter was released on June 21st, and the version that Great Frankie Lane sang was a week later in a month before the film. Okay. So which one was- They were all released almost sequentially. But- Do we know which one was charting? Which one was the big-
Starting point is 00:57:34 I think the one with Tex Ritter was the one that charted because he came with the film. And I will give Stanley Kramer credit, he loved the ballad and he was the one that said it needs to stay in the film. it needs to stay in the film. It needs to stay in the film. I think also at one point Kramer loved it so much that there was a cut of the film where it was almost wall to wall. And somebody saw it and said, enough with the song.
Starting point is 00:57:58 And Kramer suddenly thought, oh my God, I overdid it. And had it recut with less of the song. And Tim, I hope you don't mind one tiny piece of strange trivia to tie together the music and Floyd Crosby. Floyd Crosby, in addition to being a superb cinematographer, was also the father of David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Yay. Right. Well, and in text letter. They released the song, they changed the lyrics. So the original lyrics said,
Starting point is 00:58:31 I must face that deadly killer. And that became, I must face a man who hates me. And then also there, the original lyrics says, I can't be leaving until I shoot Frank Miller dead. And that became, I can't be leaving now that I need you by my side. So when they released the song, they took some of the violence out of the song about killing Frank Miller and deadly killers and all of that. Killer Miller.
Starting point is 00:59:00 Yeah, Killer Miller. What did you think of Anne MacDonald as Frank Miller? Because there's this huge buildup to this omnipresent Darth Vader-like horrible, you know, where they have the closeup. He sat there in that chair and said, I'm going to kill you, Will Kane. And they close up on the, they dolly in on the chair. And then he finally gets off the crane and they deliberately show his back and they don't show Ian McDonald as Frank Miller until he turns around to put the gun on.
Starting point is 00:59:32 And then they go to a closeup of Katie Girardo looking at him and then Ian McDonald's face, which you could tell as a kid, he had acne. I mean, it's an interesting face. One cannot say it's attractive in any way. Well, he looks, he's not supposed to be, I mean, I think he's supposed to be tough. Yeah, he's supposed to be tough.
Starting point is 00:59:51 Toughest, toughest guy. I mean, they build up. It's a bit anticlimactic. I mean, I think, you know, his three henchmen, including his brother, I think they're more interesting. I think, I think you're right. I always thought, you know, maybe when he turned around, it could be Charles McGraw. Well, that would have been good. Yeah, you know, but anyway. Or maybe Lawrence Tierney.
Starting point is 01:00:17 Yeah, Lawrence Tierney. That's right. Yeah, that would have scared me. Yeah, that would have been scary. Probably would have scared people in the cast and the crew too. That leads me to also mention just the railroad tracks and the kind of this idea of fate coming. You know, as the clock ticks down, this is going to be your fate that you have to face. And the three henchmen sitting there is a huge part of that because they're like, we're
Starting point is 01:00:46 not going to do anything until. And I'll tell you something that I have never read. I've read a lot obviously about high noon and I'm interested in everybody's theories, but I've never read anybody say something that seems sort of obvious to me, which is they're all these shots of those train tracks. This is the early 50s. Fred Zineman was just like five years or less away from hearing the news that his parents in Europe had been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. France in Europe had been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Would he not have had train tracks on his mind as something dark, horrible, sinister, frightening?
Starting point is 01:01:36 Yeah. That's an interesting point. Of course, the shot of the train arriving, they ran over Floyd Crosby's camera. They had the camera there. And really have a train. Yeah, that was was helping smoke and then it turned to black smoke and black smoke was the signal. The brakes don't work. So that the camera got run over, but the film didn't get damaged. And you can see where the train just keeps coming. And I think the train was the one that cut the cut the scene because it ran over. I guess they say Crosby grabbed the tripod, but the train hit the camera.
Starting point is 01:02:17 But the film remained intact. So they were able to use the shot, which is which is kind of interesting. Few. I mean, that does remind me of the Frankenheimer movie, The Train, where something similar happened with cameras getting smooshed and the train derailing practically onto the crew. Paul Spofield. Oh, God. What a great movie. Oh, God. I always remember the ending of The Train. Such a great movie. It's so great. High No Train, such a great movie. It's so great.
Starting point is 01:02:46 High Noon is not a long movie. It's what? No. I don't know, 80 some minutes or whatever. In real time. And yet it has such an impact. I know it supposedly many presidents or former presidents were big fans, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Starting point is 01:03:06 Maybe we'll just finish your conversation talking a little bit, kind of going back to what makes this film or why does it endure? What is it that resonates with us all these years? I think it's all about the story, first and foremost. It's about Carl Foreman and the story that he created out of that Cunningham's Collier's article and how it went through several iterations. I think some people get weary about talking about the Blacklist, but I think this movie isn't just about the Blacklist in a historical context of what happened to the people, what happened to Carl Foreman and why things happened to the people in the film. I think the blacklist
Starting point is 01:03:53 influenced Carl Foreman's crafting and writing of the story. And then I think it's about the actors starting with Gary Cooper. And I think what Julie said earlier about people who remarked about his age, I think his age enhances the drama of the film, of the fact that he has a young wife and the fact that everyone runs away from him when danger threatens. And I think the cowardice, for lack of a better term, of the townspeople, of how Thomas Mitchell just stabs them in the back in front of everyone in the church, all of that, I think you can see that now in our daily life. You can see that in a lot of our leaders. You can see that in the behavior of people and so forth. And I think that the story of High Noon is a very human one.
Starting point is 01:04:48 And finally, I want to go back to Katie Girado because I think her character and her performance in this film is absolutely groundbreaking. What's that line? She says, to be a single Mexican woman in a town like this. Now how many women could identify with that, not only in 1951, but in 2024, and how she has relationships with men, just the way men and women have relationships. She had a relationship with Miller. She had a relationship with Gary Cooper. Now she has a relationship with Lloyd Bridges.
Starting point is 01:05:24 And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that just... I also kind of like the way she's... It's on her terms. And when she's through with Gary... Exactly. She has her own business and she gets the storekeeper who goes... She doesn't just have a business. It's almost like... One of the things that I find so astonishing is the suggestion that to a certain extent, she is the commerce of this town. Exactly. She has a store. She has the saloon and she has the store.
Starting point is 01:05:53 Exactly. Exactly. Does any man in town have as much as she does? No. No. And she's very fair and very nice with all the men. Yeah. She's tough.
Starting point is 01:06:03 And they kind of respect her even though they're kind of racist. Yeah. Well, they are racist. And when Cliff Clark comes and he's the silent partner and he says, you know, Miss Ramirez, you've treated me fair. You know, my wife. And then, Katie Girado arches her eyebrows and then he immediately walks away from that because he knows. Because I'm sure the white women in the town treated her like Like she was second class or low down or a tart or something And also the fact that this guy I think the guy suddenly thinks to himself Oh, I can't mention my wife in the context of this woman. Yeah
Starting point is 01:06:43 Oh, I can't mention my wife in the context of this woman. Yeah, exactly. Oops. It's it's. But it's a completely business like relationship. And the other relationship that's really curious to me that I thought about is the relationship of her fact totem, that old guy who sits outside her room and consults with her and does this, do you want me to take on Miller? You know, he's willing to put his life on the line for
Starting point is 01:07:09 her and he's this old guy and I looked, I watched that performance and I said they used to be lovers, they used to be lovers and that's why he is faithful to her and he said he was like a long ago. Still her slave. Or something. And he's there. And he loves her. And he's willing to serve her and be.
Starting point is 01:07:38 He's almost like Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard with Gloria Swanson. You're right. He's willing to You're right. He's here to be the factotum just so he can still be near her. And watch over her. And watch over her, exactly, exactly.
Starting point is 01:07:54 And I thought that was, there's so many nuances in this film that are so subtle and so mature for a 1951 film. I mean, this is not a Warner Brothers Western. It's not. Absolutely right. And I think a lot of people, even those who are not crazy about the movie, acknowledge that it is maybe one of the first revisionist Westerns. It is not, at first glance you think, oh, the bad guys are coming to town
Starting point is 01:08:30 and the sheriff has to deal with them. Well, that's a classic Western story. Well, of course, that's not what this is. And I think the turning on its head of that, the cliche is one of the great strengths of the film. And I think as we were saying before and as you said, Tim, the film, it shows, I was going to say it attacks, but I think it's a little more grown up than that. It demonstrates very clearly the complacency of a community and what could potentially happen. The ending of the film is dark, dark,
Starting point is 01:09:08 dark. The hero basically says, to hell with you. To the people who, in a way, he has saved from this one threat. But is that town going to be any good when he leaves? No, They've shamed themselves. Julie, I think you can make the argument that High Noon is noir-stained. It sure is. It sure is. And the fact that Westerns really changed after World War II with the Blood on the Moon, the gunfighter, and then you also had the Tony Mann, James Stewart Westerns, starting with Winchester 73. And Westerns became much more pessimistic, much darker. It wasn't just the good guys and the bad guys.
Starting point is 01:09:54 And it kind of replicated how the gangster movies of the 1930s became film noir, where your protagonists didn't necessarily follow the law and it wasn't just the good guys and the bad guys and the cops also could be corrupt and venal and so forth. And I think this was acceptable in part because this was the era when people were coming back and I mean, you know, many folks obviously were literally coming back from the war. But even those who hadn't been overseas who hadn't been fighting were also coming back from the experience of living through that period. And whatever the kind of sparkly shiny, here's your brand new refrigerator kind of idea of the 50s that exists out there. It was actually a period where there was a lot more doubt and worry and concern. And I think the fact that we were in the midst of this whole blacklist period where who do you trust in the government? Remember that the blacklist was conceived and carried out by our government.
Starting point is 01:11:07 Well, yeah, but the government wasn't the ones that blacklisted people. The people who blacklisted were the studios, were CB Mill, were all these other people, were the sponsors in early television. They were the ones, and it was all done the same way the citizens of Hadleyville were scared and wouldn't step up to do the right thing. This parallel with the blacklist of the producers, the studios, sponsors, business people, all
Starting point is 01:11:44 of that. It replicated what they were doing. But all being harassed and harried by these forces in the United States government. McCarthy was a senator, and the Red Scare and, you know, let's go out and get the commies, which sometimes just meant, oh, well, you signed a pro-labor petition back in the 30s? You're a commie. I mean, it was crazy. And the fact is that I personally can hear some echoes of that today. And I think that is another mark of a really great movie, Tim, that it can persist, its force field in a way, travels through time and remains powerful.
Starting point is 01:12:33 Well, it is a film that- Taking up your neckache. It certainly is a film that has stood the test of time and it resonates as much today as it did then. And I think that's the definition of a classic, and it's not a old movie, particularly to people who haven't seen it. And as I said at the beginning, no one says that's an old Mozart concerto, or that's an old Da Vinci painting.
Starting point is 01:13:00 There's no such thing as old movies. There's great movies, there's good movies, there's movies that aren't so great, but there's no such thing as an old movie. And High Noon is not old. It is as topical and fresh today as it was in 1952. So there you have it. Well, thanks so much. There's so much we could talk about and we have gone over on this film, but thanks so much for coming on the Extras podcast and sharing all of your opinions and insights for this film. I highly recommend both of the commentaries that are on this new 4K coming out from Keenah Lordenburg.
Starting point is 01:13:36 Tim, thanks for having us. I really have to say your program, the Extras extras does a really great job of digging down into films like this. And I can't, I can't right now think of another podcast that does it so well. So thanks for having us both on. It's non-parade. Thank you. It's so much fun. Thank you. And I got to see Julie again. For those of you interested in purchasing Hynoon, the new HD Master is a 4K scan of
Starting point is 01:14:12 the 35mm original camera negative and it looks terrific. The 2-disc release from KinoLover is just loaded with extras including 6 very informative archival featurettes, trailers, and the two new audio commentaries from Alan and Julie. There is a purchase link in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv and I highly recommend this film. If this is the first episode of The Extras you've listened to and you enjoyed it, please think about following the show at your favorite podcast provider. If you're on social media, you can find links to our
Starting point is 01:14:47 Facebook, X, and other social media pages in the podcast show notes as well. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard, stay slightly obsessed. private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

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