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“High Noon” is on right now......


Cat Brules

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“High Noon” is playing on The Western Channel.

Gary Cooper

Katy Jurado

Grace Kelly

 

Tex Ritter sings the theme from “High Noon”........  Cat Brules

 

 

 

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Its a great movie!  Don't get me wrong. Just not one of my favorites.

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26 minutes ago, Marauder SASS #13056 said:

Isn't that one of leftist "anti-westerns" where essentially  everyone is a coward?

 

That's how the Duke felt about it, but you have presidents like Ike and Reagan really loving the movie for embodying a man doing what is right in the face of overwhelming odds.

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I agree; the movie was highly political and was the darling of the liberal Left and the communist Hollywood “underground” film community, that was being ferreted out and exposed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  The big studios were blacklisting these same people.  Gary Cooper’s career was also beginning its inevitable downslide, and Grace Kelly was a beautiful, fresh new face, and the new bride to the Gary Cooper (who was 20++ years older) character, Will Kane.  High Noon (of course) was nominated for a hatful of Oscars, winning a few, and Gary Cooper won best actor.  High Noon is an allegorical interpretation, of sorts, of the Country’s attack on the “Red Menace”.  Of course, the Red Menace was real, and Hollywood was making films littered with leftist propaganda, making the so-called “paranoia” ligitimate.  So, that, I believe, is the “back-story” in “High Noon”.

 

I don’t care much for that, though, and I don’t usually think about the back story much, either.  I see “High Noon” as a somewhat flawed (they all are, for dramatic reasons), but a good, well-made, well-performed Western Classic.  I have watched it again and again.


Cat Brules

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On 5/24/2020 at 9:57 AM, Marauder SASS #13056 said:

Isn't that one of leftist "anti-westerns" where essentially  everyone is a coward?

 

If you don't like Westerns where the townsfolk are cowards, scatter when the bad guys come, and have to be saved by the brave gunfighter, either lawman or "knight on horseback", then half of the good and great ones go out the window!

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It is a classic movie, and fairly entertaining. 

But...not very realistic, or typical, of the period/settlements, of the American West.

In the real western towns, most of the townsfolk were veterans of either the war-between-the-states, or the Indian wars.  Some, like as not, were buffalo hunters, and cowboys, that had brought herds up the trail, and just stayed in the area to make a living.  Since the town, in the movie, had a rail road, some of the folks could have worked for them, and supplied meat to the track workers.  Most knew how to use firearms, since most used firearms, and grew up using them....hunting for meat for the table, if nothing else. 

When the James gang, and later the Dalton gang, rode into town (Northfield, Minnesota and Coffeyville, Kansas) to rob, the town folk rose to the occasion, and shot them to doll-rags.

Yep, some groups rode into western towns and robbed, and got away with it.  But, from reading history, and knowing the mindset of the folks that lived in the west, it seems clear that the town folk did not retreat to their holes in fear, but stood up to them, as they were able. 

This movie gives a false impression of the towns, and settlements, of the American West.  I would think the town folk's mindset is more accurate to the mindset of today, and not the old west.

Sure, some may have avoided trouble, back then, but by and large the citizens of the western towns were tough, resilient, and no nonsense types. Given the harsh life of the west, they had to be that way to survive.

 

My Two Bits.

W.K.   

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I agree with the above remarks about Western town folks taking up arms and protecting themselves and the sheriff or marshal of the town.  

 

It was just a movie, of course and reality is not Hollywood.  So realistically, I think Frank Miller would not have come back for Kane in the manner portrayed, and I think a good number of the townsmen would stood with Will Kane if Miller did come back.  
 

The fact is, I personally think the town marshal would no problem taking up a rifle, walking down to the train station, and ambushing Frank Miller‘s two or three friends and waiting for Frank Miller.  Just shoot them all in the back and drag them out behind the building.  When Frank Miller stepped off the train, the marshal would shoot Miller in the head.  Problem solved.  That’s what Will Kane should have done, or something close to it.  It was essentially war.  When there’s no law (one Marshal, no deputies), he would attack, keeping the odds and surprise on his side.  
 

I did like how the timing in the movie actually matched real time,  

 

Cat Brules

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