Kevin Brianton
Senior Lecturer, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
The Westerns hold pride of place in American cinema. They retold the legends and myths of America’s frontier past and had been a feature of cinema virtually since its inception. In the 1950s, hundreds of westerns were made which dealt with many aspects of American life. It was perhaps inevitable, with the stifling of direct political criticism, and the pressing concerns of McCarthyism and communism, that westerns would take on a political dimension in the 1950s.
The 1947 investigation proved to be only a testing of the waters for HUAC. The Hollywood 10 went to prison in September 1950 and the committee re-gathered momentum to pounce on Hollywood again. The Hollywood 10’s imprisonment had increased the power of HUAC to make it feared throughout the film industry. Director Joseph Losey told an interviewer that ‘the most terrifying thing about the atmosphere was seeing people succumb, and seeing all protest disappear. Because if you did protest, you’d had it.’[1] The second HUAC investigations were to be larger and more systematic and they destroyed the remnants of the liberal-left in Hollywood without any effective opposition. In the middle of these rising fears about HUAC’s return, Carl Foremen was writing the screenplay for a western called High Noon.
The film was about the desperate efforts of the Sheriff Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, to get help from the townspeople to fight Frank Miller and his gang, who were being released from jail that day, and who had promised revenge on the town and Kane. Miller, who Kane put in prison for murder, had been pardoned, and his gang were gathering at train station to meet when the train arrived at noon. Kane approached all the town leaders for assistance to fight Miller but they all abandoned him. The town and church leaders demanded that he leave town, claiming that the gang would leave the town alone if he was not there. Kane failed in his attempts and faced the gunmen alone. After defeating the four outlaws, Kane threw his badge onto the street in disgust at the town and left. The screenwriter wanted the audience to equate the people of Cooper’s town with those who suddenly deserted their blacklisted friends in Hollywood.
Kane’s disgust equaled Foreman’s as friends humbled themselves and begged for help from the Hollywood community without success. Foreman had been called to testify in front of HUAC and intended to be an un-co-operative witness. He said his friends began turning their backs on him even though he was not a communist:
My associates were afraid for themselves – I don’t believe them – and tried to get off the film, unsuccessfully. They went to Gary Cooper and he refused (to go along with them). Fred Zimmerman, too, was very staunch and very loyal, so was out backer, Bruce Church.
There are scenes in the film that are taken from life. The scene in the church is a distillation of meetings I had with partners, associates and lawyers. And there’s the scene with the man who offers to help and come back with his gun and asks, where are the others? Cooper says there no others … I became the Gary Cooper character.[2]
Foreman depicted Hollywood society in a poor light as the threat of McCarthyism approached. The pillars of the community were afraid that a gunfight would jeopardise business and possible future investment in the town and urged Kane to leave. Their attitude was similar to the studio heads who abandoned their employees on the slightest of pretexts to avoid bad publicity and poor box office returns. The religious leaders also pulled back from Kane because they cannot sanction violence. He was only offered help by only a 14 year old boy and the town drunk and he turned down both. The retired marshal wanted to help but could not because of his arthritis.
The point of the film was that the town united could have easily defeated the threat. Instead the Hollywood community pursued their own individual selfish ends and were torn apart. The point was not lost after the film’s release and Foreman was blacklisted for his efforts for many years. He was ‘morosely pleased’ when the message of the film was understood by the conservatives.[3]
High Noon was one of the most important westerns of the 1950s and many films followed its pattern of a lone law officer facing a threat to the town. Foreman certainly had no doubts when he wrote the screenplay that the town was Hollywood and the four men approaching represented HUAC and when the film was released The New York Times film reviewer Bosley Crowther wrote:
It is a story that bears a close resemblance to things that are happening today where people are traumatised by bullies and surrendering their freedoms … (Kane) is a man with the sense to meet a challenge, not duck and hope it will go away … The marshal can give a few lessons to the people of Hollywood today.[4]
However, it is doubtful whether the audience of the time saw it in that light. One of the Hollywood 10, Ring Lardner Jr, who knew Carl Foreman, said he could see no anti-HUAC message in the film beyond the general theme of standing up for oneself.[5] If members of the Hollywood 10, who were more sensitive on the topic did not get the message, and knew the screenwriter, what hope was there for the general audience. The film had an anti-HUAC message but it is uncertain whether that message got across to the audience. Director Zinnemann said he did not make films to prove anything.[6]
The
film can also be read as a defence of McCarthy with a lone figure standing up against the communist threat. The heroic figure of Kane could be seen as
McCarthy desperately trying to awaken the community to the impending threat of
communism. Critic Phillip French has
also suggested that the film was about the United States reluctantly renewing
its role in world affairs.[7] High
Noon started a cycle of movies with the lone or aloof law official figure,
struggling with both the town and some form of menace on the horizon. Something in that formula clicked with the
audience and the film finished eighth in the box office for 1952.[8] The audience responded to the film but it is
unclear to exactly what they were responding.
[1] Tom Milne (ed.). Losey on Losey, Secker & Warburg, London, 1968, p. 90.
[2] Rudy Behlmer, Behind the Scenes: The Making of, Samuel French, New York, 1990, p. 276.
[3] Nora Sayre, Running Time: Films of he Cold War, Dial, New York, 1982, p. 176.
[4] New York Times, 3 August 1952.
[5] Ring Lardner Jr. at an Australian Film Institute Seminar on 26 March 1991. (Notes taken by author).
[6] Behimer, Behind p. 277.
[7] Phillip French, Westerns: Aspects of a Genre, Secker and Warburg, London, 1977, p. 35
[8] Cobbett Steinberg, Reel Facts: The Movie Book of Records, Vintage, New York, p. 21.
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