High June
High Noon is one of the most iconic Westerns ever made, a true cinematic masterpiece from the golden era of Hollywood. Starring Gary Cooper and a young Grace Kelly, the film is the story of a small-town marshal, played by Cooper, and his inability to gather a posse of men to help him fight off a gang of bad guys coming into town on the noon train to exact terrible revenge on him. The growing isolation he feels as his friends and colleagues desert him to face the showdown alone is captured perfectly, and the film was quite rightly a huge hit with audiences, and quickly became a classic of the genre. The idea of a gang of bad men arriving on the noon train rather than riding into town on their horses may seem a little odd for a classic Western at first, but there was a very good reason for that, which we'll come back to in a moment...
Gary Cooper was always a shoe-in for playing the good guy in a classic western: raised on a ranch in Montana, with a supreme court justice for a father who had a strong moral compass, it made the screen legend a natural choice for a role such as that of Marshal Kane in High Noon. It's a classic piece of cinema worthy of its fame, but there are also a couple of significant back stories to the production that makes it in hindsight even more memorable, and a genuinely important piece of cinematic history for more reasons than you may initially think.
The screenwriter for High Noon was Carl Foreman, perhaps more famous for writing Bridge On The River Kwai, which was to come later, but in 1952, his career was very much on the line thanks to drama of a different sort in the form of the odious scourge of McCarthyism. Foreman, as a former member of the Communist Party, had appeared before McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities the previous year and been labelled as 'uncooperative' due to his refusal to name other Communists known to him. As a result, he was blacklisted by all of the Hollywood movie makers, with High Noon being his last film before he fled the U.S. to England where he continued to work under an alias. But even High Noon nearly didn't happen for him. He was actually struck off the production team after shooting had started, but Gary Cooper stood up for him and, according to his daughter, said that if Foreman was off the picture, then so was he. The bosses and producers therefore relented, allowing the movie to continue, crediting Foreman as the screenwriter, but removing him from the production credits.
That Cooper would take such a stand was remarkably brave and completely in keeping (as it happens) with his role in the film as Marshal Kane. The film actually appears to be an allegory of Foreman's experience at the hands of McCarthy, which brings me back to that noon train and the approaching deadline of inevitability together with the increasing isolation as friends desert to leave you facing the music alone. The movie in this way perfectly mimics what Foreman and so many others must have faced as their time in front of the House Committee approached and then consumed them.
That we now appear, some sixty years on from the days of McCarthy, to be in another era of witch-hunts and inquisitions truly bothers me, and I can only hope that enough brave souls such as Gary Cooper stand up to this sort of menace and give some hope to humanity.
Another, less desperate form of high noon for us runners is, of course, the race day deadline. With the Sydney half marathon now behind me, it's time to look to the next race goal, and it's a big one for me, being the Sydney full-distance marathon sixteen weeks hence. That, of course, means that this is week #1 of a standard sixteen-week marathon training schedule, and so training has commenced in earnest once again, only this time with greater emphasis on endurance and made more difficult still by the twelve weeks of winter through which I must train, today being the very first official day of the season of dread for those who cavort about in singlets and shorts in the name of athleticism. It's a cruel form of lunacy, and not one I've ever really successfully mastered through the dark, coldest months of the year as it is here on the remote, lower parts of the southern side of the globe.
Still, the enthusiasm is strong with this one just now, so I'll continue plodding on down Optimist's Row and see how we go. It's a long way, however, and I'll need plenty of motivation cattle prodding to see it through.
Right then, let's get on with it.
High June
