Kevin Brianton
Strategic Communication Senior Lecturer, Melbourne: Australia.
High Noon had many successors which took up the various themes about McCarthyism in differing ways. Riding Shotgun (1954) again looked at the political situation in allegorical terms, but with disdain for the hysteria created by McCarthy. A respected guard on the stage coach Larry Delon, played by Randolph Scott, attempted to warn the town of an impending raid on the town’s ‘Bank Club’ by a gang of criminals. Delon was almost lynched by the townspeople who believed that he was responsible for the shooting of a stagecoach. A posse was formed to chase the outlaws who were actually planning to rob the undefended town. Delon was bailed up in a building throughout the film while the town attempted to lynch him. Eventually the outlaws raided and Delon foiled the robbery and regained the town’s respect. The film was not as sharp in its criticism of the worn as in High Noon, but there were some strong scenes where Scott walked through the town with every eye on him, thinking; ‘The city had already tried and found me guilty.[1] The film was not critical of the law enforcement agencies as the deputy Sheriff was depicted as a sensible man desperately trying to see that no one gets hurt in the town’s desire to lynch Scott.
Unlike High Noon, the film showed that the town was willing to fight, but needed firm leadership. Without that leadership, the town could turn into a lynch-mob and attack the innocent. Riding Shotgun was a conservative film that asked for respect for the traditional law enforcement, rather than the hysteria of the mob.
Although not strictly a western, as it was set in contemporary America, Bad Day at Black Rock (1954) was one of the most clear cut attacks on the McCarthyite era within the genre. Bad Day at Black Rock was directed by John Sturges, who was one of the petitioners for Jospeh L. Mankiewicz, and produced by Dore Schary who protested against the Waldorf Declaration. Schary would work on the film during the day and watch the Army-McCarthy hearings at night.[2] It was clear that these events had an impact of the filmmakers as the film was a concerted liberal attack on the McCarthyite era.
John J. Macreedy, played by Spencer Tracy, was a one-armed stranger who stopped at an isolated desert town in California. His aim was to give to a Japanese farmer a Congressional Medal of Honor, won by his son, who served with Macreedy during the war and saved his life. It was the first time the train had stopped in four years and the townspeople were clearly threatened by his presence. Macreedy stumbled across the fact that the town’s leader Reno, played by Robert Ryan, killed the Japanese farmer at the outbreak of the Second World War. He described the town as being taken over by the ‘guerillas.’ The town was aware of the crime but afraid to fight Reno who was a power-crazed racist and considered the lynching of the Japanese farmer to be a patriotic act. One of his henchmen Pete Wirth, played by John Ericson, said ‘We were drunk, patriotic drunk,’ to explain the lynching.[3]
Reno was the closest Hollywood got to a portrayal of Joseph McCarthy until the depiction of the crazed Senator in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He manipulated and terrified the people of the town with the crime. He described Macreedy as a ‘virus’ which had given the town a fever and had to be destroyed. Very similar to the way, McCarthy depicted communists as an infection of the American political system. The Sheriff, played by Dean Jagger, was ineffectual and complaint to Reno’s orders, just as McCarthy blustered his way over the legal system. Others simply tried to ignore the crime and remained in apathetic fear. When Macreedy faced and defeated Reno, the town was forced to face the collective guilt of their silence. The conclusion of the film was optimistic as it showed the town could prosper again with the departure of Reno, just as the American community had to realize the enormity of the damage inflicted by the McCarthyite era before it could begin to move forward again.
Other films carried similar messages to High Noon throughout the 1950s. In At Gunpoint (1955) a shopkeeper played by Fred MacMurray killed a bank robber with a lucky shot. He was called a hero, but his fellow townspeople deserted him when the robbers plotted reprisals. MacMurray eventually convinced the town to fight and they defeated the outlaws when they return. In The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), the townspeople cower in a church while a gunslinger threatened to burn down the town unless their reluctant local hero cam out for a showdown. They eventually forced him out to face the villain.
In The Tin Star (1957), a sheriff had to stand up to a town turned into a lynch mob to re-establish the authority of law and order. The prisoners inside his jail were clearly guilty and it was certain they would be hanged or jailed. The film argued that the lynch mob was not the answer. Only when the leader of the lynchers was stared down, humiliated and then destroyed did peace come to the town. If the mob was equated with McCarthyism, the legal approach of the sheriff was the best way for American society to go. The central figure was a man similar to High Noon’s Will Kane who was bitter and resentful about society but at the end of the film, he picked up ‘the tin star’ to renew the fight against criminals.[4] Law and order depended on the professional pride and determination of law enforcement officers. Without them, the weak townspeople would be at the mercy of the bandits and agitators. The central theme of these films was that the town by its inaction or corruption could collapse into lawlessness.
As
the 1950s drew to a close, director Jack Arnold made an interesting western
called No Name on the Bullet (1959)
which can be read as an anti-McCarthyite tract.
A stranger played by Audie Murphy rode into town and registered at a
hotel. He was John Gant who made his
living goading people into a fight and then killing them in self defence. His appearance caused a slow breakdown of the
town as prominent citizens remembered guilty secrets of the past and were
afraid that he has been sent to kill them.
Old antagonisms began to rise an people committed suicide or left town
or tried to bribe Gant. The films focused on what fear can do to people. If you were Gant’s target then you were
already dead. The most effective scenes
were when a banker with a guilty secret in his past attempted to buy Gant off
the trail. But Gant would not leave the
town until his intended victim was dead.
The law enforcement officers can’t stop him as he was too deadly with
the gun, and even managed to stare down the entire town when they tried to
drive him out. The atmosphere of
paranoia and fear which pervaded the film with Gant’s arrival and Murphy’s edgy
performance as Gant make it one of the most effective successors to High Noon. At the end of the film, Gant ensured that his
target was dead, but he was wounded and rode away. He could certainly return and wreck havoc
again.
[1] Riding Shotgun Warner, (d) Andre De Toth, 
Tom Blackburn.
[2] Dore Schary, Heyday: An Autobiography of Dore Schary, Berkley Books, Boston, 1969, p. 273. The Army-McCarthy hearings proved to be the end of the political career of McCarthy. He charged the army with tolerating communist subversion. Televised hearings were held before the Senate Armed Forces Committee which left McCarthy thoroughly discredited. For an account see William Manchester, The Glory and The Dream, Bantam, New York, 1975, pp. 700-716.
[3] Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges, Milliard Kaufman
[4] One of the sources for High Noon was a story called The Tin Star by John Cunningham which appeared in Colliers on 6 December 1947. Behlmer, p. 270.
Cinema history 