High Noon - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of High Noon or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to High Noon

[nora]

Film debut of Lee Van Cleef. NOTE: This debut occurred in a manner granted few--if any--debuting actors: he appears, solo, in the opening pre-title shots.

[sophie]

Lee Van Cleef was originally hired to play Deputy Marshal Harvey Pell. However, producer Stanley Kramer decided that his nose was too "hooked", which made him look like a villain, and told him to get it fixed. Van Cleef refused, and Lloyd Bridges got the part. Van Cleef was given the smaller role of gunman Jack Colby, one of the Miller gang.

[jessica]

The climax begins with a long pullback from Gary Cooper, walking the dusty streets of the desolate town. Fred Zinnemann achieved this by using a long crane that he borrowed from fellow director George Stevens. If you look closely, you can see, in the upper frame, the nearby Warner Brothers studio lot. The same Western set on the Columbia Pictures lot was used by Zinnemann as a Hawaiian locale in From Here to Eternity (1953).

[michele]

Lon Chaney Jr. played Gary Cooper's weary, debilitated old mentor in this movie. In real life Chaney was five years younger than Cooper, and wore heavy makeup to make the character's appearance more plausible.

[richard]

Lee Van Cleef who played "Jack Colby", one of the Three Outlaws coming into town to kill Gary Cooper,'s Will Kane, literally played the same type of role in 1957's Gunfight at the OK Corral! Here once again, like the beginning of High Noon, Cleef plays one out of Three Outlaws approaching a town coming to kill Kirk Douglas's 'Doc Holliday!? In both films he is killed, the only diffrence was the character's name, Cleef's character is called 'Ed Bailey'.

[elmer]

In the showdown scenes, western film trivia buffs may notice a store called "Boyd's Hardware", a reference to William Boyd, who played the title role in the Hopalong Cassidy (1952) television series.

[jessica]

Near the start of the film you can see black smoke in the distance behind the church and rising from a fixed location. The church is the St Joseph's Catholic Church, which still stands in Tuolumne City, CA. The smoke is coming from the Tuolumne Fire Protection District, located a quarter-mile to the southwest, which still exists. The area in back of the TFPD was used for the safe burning of refuse.

[miriam]

John Wayne set up and ran an "anti-Communist" organization for the film industry. He 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, during which he claimed that Gary 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. The fact is that while Kane threw his badge to the ground, he did not step on it.

[michele]

Frankie Laine had a million-selling record with the title song "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling)", though Tex Ritter's version of the song, heard on the soundtrack, has fared well over the years.

[claude]

There were only two characters in town who actually offered to help Kane fight despite the odds: Jimmy, the drunk with an eye patch (played by William Newell), and Johnny, a young boy (played by Ralph Reed).

[claude]

As inspiration for the film's look, Fred Zinnemann and cinematographer Floyd Crosby studied the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.

[sara]

Since Gary Cooper was 50 38-year-old Lloyd Bridges was cast as 20-something Deputy Marshal Harvey Pell.

[edgar]

In the fight scene involving Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) and Deputy Marshal Harvey Pell (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 unwell and in pain, but was gracious and understanding, according to Lloyd.

[jim]

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

[morris]

Audiences in 1952 were disappointed with the revelation that Ian MacDonald was portraying Frank Miller. With his eventual appearance in the film being built up for more than an hour, fans were expecting a more well-known actor. Surveys taken at theaters revealed that Ward Bond, a frequent face in westerns, and Walter Brennan, a frequent co-star of Gary Cooper, were the top names the fans would have liked to see as Frank Miller. However, MacDonald's casting has become more appreciated as the film's legacy has grown.