This book is about the making of the movie High Noon, that western that some people don’t think it is a western and others such as Presidents named it one of their favorite movie. The author takes you through Gary Cooper’s life, childhood and his way to Hollywood. The first movies, Sgt York, Pride of the Yankees, to name just a few. The author then will take you through the HUAC hearings, and how the FBI during the early forties broke into offices to steal records of people they felt were signed up to be communists. Mind you this all took place in Hollywood and included writers, directors, actors, even some sectaries, and some camera operators. Of course the FBI is just looking out for everyone. After WWII, jobs were becoming tighter and so unions began to from and so did the idea that unions were part of a communist plot. Meanwhile as this was going Carl Foreman who worked on many films as a writer had come up with the idea of High Noon and was beginning to put everything in place. Hiring the director and actors, Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, and Katy Jurdo to name a few. During this time early fifties a hearing began in L.A. and people would be called who were suspected of having joined the communist party. Everyone was born in the U.S. and if they invoked either of their 1st or 5th amendment rights per the constitution they would be blacklisted in Hollywood. If you were named by someone you could be fired that very same day. Carl would be called in 1951 and before he went he had finished filming High Noon, but made an agreement with his partners at the time to take his name off the credits still get paid, all because he was not going to name anyone at his hearing. Growing up in the streets of Chicago this was not what you did. It should also be said that he served in the armed forces during WWII and yet still they called into question his loyalty. He would be found guilty because he showed up and because he would not give any names, he would end up leaving the U.S moving to England. Later he would write Bridge over river Kiwi, and the guns of Navorone, to name a few. I still liked and always have liked this movie and the author takes you the reader through a time in our country that know talks about any more but many people’s lives were affected by it and yet the congressmen and Senators, would only be voted out not to have a mark like they put on the people who came through their doors. A good book.

I included this excellent contextual history in this feature on classic Hollywood reads.

This book was a fascinating look at the filming of High Noon. I loved it and was so glad I read it. With the political climate we are currently living through, it was particularly interesting.

It's hard to believe, but during its production the classic Academy Award-winning western High Noon (1952) was not expected to attract much more attention and acclaim than a standard 'B' picture. It had a low budget, brief production schedule, and had become almost an afterthought to producer Stanley Kramer, who was occupied with a new production deal he had made with Columbia Studios. In a new book, Glenn Frankel describes the major players in the film's creation, its production, and the way the blacklist affected the tone of the final product and the lives of its creators.

All the major players of the film are profiled, with enough backstory to explain how they came to be on an isolated western film location in the early fifties. It's an interesting juxtaposition of personalities and careers, from the seasoned Montana cowboy and established movie star Gary Cooper to the less assured Philadelphia socialite Grace Kelly in her first major role. You also get a sense of the inner workings of the production company that Stanley Kramer ran with the film's screenwriter Carl Foreman, and the challenges of pulling together a strong cast and crew for a low-budget film.

These personal histories are alternated with stories of the film's production and the simultaneous black list drama. Those story lines intertwined when former Communist Foreman's script started to reflect the increasing pressure he felt from HUAC as he continued to refuse to name names or confirm his political beliefs. A standard story of a honorable lawman became a portrait of his own frustrations. The writer's isolation ultimately closely mirrors that of Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who becomes similarly disillusioned when even the people he felt he could rely upon the most abandon him. Ironically, the initially firmly loyal Cooper would be one of the men to step back in his support of Foreman, though he was essentially forced to do so.

I've read a lot about the Hollywood blacklist, and while I've found the more sweeping histories of this time fascinating, I've learned that the more personal the stories are, the better I understand the effect of that time on Hollywood. Through Foreman's fear, desperate strategizing, and depression, the damage of the blacklist can be understood with excruciating clarity. It is possible to understand how many in the movie industry acted in ways that seem cowardly to modern eyes, and even to contemporaries at the time, but who were too focused on survival to consider the consequences of naming names and caving to HUAC.

Foreman is one of the men who didn't cave and he never stopped feeling angry about being punished for it. Frankel shows how the screenwriter's defiance of committee pressures put stress on his career and personal life, even destroying his marriage. While his is a bleak story, it is made clear that he comes out ahead of many of his colleagues simply because his conscience allowed him to sleep at night. The brash, but brilliant writer becomes the heart of the story, sometimes unsympathetic, but always worth rooting for.

This is an effective account of the production of High Noon and the tense atmosphere surrounding it, expertly mixing politics and entertainment until it is evident that there is often very little difference between the two.

The weight of Glenn Frankel’s second book in looking at the historical Hollywood is truly outlined in High Noon’s sub-title: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. Frankel does provide a deep-dive directorial-style narration into the making of the Gary Cooper/Grace Kelly Western classic High Noon, but this account’s true showdown occurs as Congress and HUAC play the men in black with the artist as the white hat, fading hero pressed into one more battle.

And the weight this book carries is impressive. Frankel intensely presents meticulous research into the time and era of the Red scare, its affect on the Hollywood engine, and the turmoil brought on by the ensuing witch hunts. However, such intensity often comes off with the academia stylings of a research paper that pulls away from the historical narrative of the film’s origin. For a quicker, compelling view into the times of the notorious Hollywood blacklist, one needs only to view the well-done 2015 film Trumbo.

When the eponymous film is in focus, Frankel creates compelling, compassionate characters out of writer Carl Foreman, producer Stanley Kramer, director Fred Zinnemann, editor Elmo Williams, and star Gary Cooper. Each of these men’s desires, and especially fears, are triumphantly captured and endowed with a humanizing sense of wanting no less than to be free and create. Their stories are strong and wonderful and flawed and real with the end result, the film High Noon, becoming an enduring classic. Frankel’s read, High Noon, unfortunately, becomes so enraptured with the history, that the magic of Hollywood is forgotten for long, dry spells.

Historian purists will certain applaud Frankel’s research. Fans of film might find this book cumbersome. The lawman might finally get his hand at justice, but the sun has already set.