High Noon

In 1946, when Carl Foreman began outlining his new script for a revisionist Western, the Allies had just won the war and the United Nations was a brand new entity. Foreman wanted to write an allegory about the need for world unity to defeat unchecked aggression and uphold democracy.  The story would be about a lawman recruiting local townspeople to help fight a gang of violent outlaws.  Then the Cold War started. The spirit of cooperation between the United States and Russia was replaced by a new era of anxiety and mistrust.

By the time Foreman started his first draft of High Noon, America had shifted right and opportunistic Republicans were accusing domestic communist sympathizers of being a serious threat to American freedom. Karl Baarslag of the American Legion said, "A communist is a completely transformed, unrecognizable and dedicated man. While he may retain the physical characteristics of the rest of us, his mental and psychic processes might as well be from another planet." In other words, communists were like zombies dedicated to destroying the American way of life.

J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, called communists "masters of deceit."  His paranoia had a seed of truth since the American Communist Party did take marching orders from Joseph Stalin. But most American communists were not agents of a foreign power. Like Bernie Sanders supporters today, they were responding to the inequality of American wealth distribution. They desired change through peaceful means, not revolution.

Carl Foreman was a struggling screenwriter. Like many of his peers, he joined the communist party in 1938. "The idea was just in the air," he said. He quit the party in 1943 after enlisting in the army. During World War II he made military training films with Frank Capra including writing the film Know Your Enemy-Japan. After the war, he returned to Hollywood and his career took off. He worked with his friend, producer Stanley Kramer, writing the films Champion and The Men (Marlon Brando's debut). Both were nominated for Best Screenplay awards.

As Foreman toiled on the High Noon screenplay, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held public hearings into communist infiltration of Hollywood. HUAC ignored Foreman in their first round of hearings in 1947. "I was a very unimportant little fellow," Foreman said. But as his career grew in prominence, HUAC took notice. In 1951, Foreman received a pink letter in the mail. It was a HUAC subpoena commanding him to appear before the committee. Foreman had two choices: confess his communist past and provide names of fellow travelers or plead the Fifth and refuse to answer questions. Option one meant humiliation; option two was career suicide.

As he contemplated his choices, his High Noon screenplay took a new direction. It became an allegory about the blacklist. Marshall Will Kane (Gary Cooper) was Carl Foreman. The outlaws gunning for the marshall were the H.U.A.C. members threatening Foreman's livelihood. The cowardly citizens of the small town were Foreman's Hollywood peers who refused to protest the blacklist. "As I was writing the screenplay, it became insane," Foreman said. "Life was mirroring art and art was mirroring life…I became the Gary Cooper character."

The Cold War gained momentum and national sentiment turned against the so-called "reds in Hollywood." Ten prominent filmmakers (the Hollywood Ten) were convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in prison. Stanley Kramer, the producer of High Noon, had a difficult decision. He'd started his own production company and was on the verge of a distribution deal with Columbia. He knew if he publicly supported Foreman, he'd risk his studio deal.

Foreman tried to convince Kramer to remain strong and resist the committee. Kramer urged Foreman not to plead the Fifth as if he had something to hide. Kramer felt this would cast shade on everyone involved with High Noon. The two old friends became enemies. By the second week of production, Kramer told Foreman to hand in his resignation and sell his stock options in the film. Foreman refused. He wanted to see the film through to the end. He also didn't want to testy before HUAC as someone who'd lost the support of his peers.

Foreman was fired. But Fred Zinnemann, the film's director, and Gary Cooper, the star, objected. In addition, Kramer learned that Foreman never signed a contract deferring his film salary. This meant the bank financing the film could cut off funding needed to complete production. Kramer had no choice but to rehire Foreman as writer and associate producer. According to Foreman, Kramer told him, "Well, you've won." They met for several hours but their friendship officially ended that day.

On September 24, 1951, Foreman drove to the Los Angeles Federal Building to testify in front of HUAC. When asked if he was a communist, he said he'd signed a loyalty oath for the Screen Writers Guild stating he was not a communist party member. "That statement was true at the time and is true today," he said. Committee members asked if he'd been a communist prior to 1950. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.  He also refused to name names of other communists.

HUAC members grew agitated but Foreman stood firm. He was labeled an "uncooperative witness." Days after his testimony, stockholders and company directors of High Noon legally removed Foreman from all involvement with the film. "They threw me to the wolves," Foreman said. Foreman's lawyers negotiated a settlement for around $150,000 and Foreman surrendered his associate producer credit.

He was at the peak of his craft and one of the best screenwriters in Hollywood, but Foreman was blacklisted and unable to find work. Frustrated, he moved to London where he lived and worked for the next 25 years. In 1956, he co-wrote The Bridge On the River Kwai. The film won a Best Screenplay Oscar but due to the blacklist the screen credit went to Pierre Boule, author of the novel that inspired the film. Not until 1984 did the Motion Picture Academy finally recognize Foreman (and co-writer Michael Wilson) as the true screenwriters. Foreman died of a brain tumor a few months before received his belated Oscar.

High Noon was released in 1952 and was a smash success. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Screenplay and Best Picture. President Eisenhower loved the movie. Ronald Reagan called High Noon his favorite film. So did Bill Clinton who screen the film in the White House 17 times.

Not everyone was a fan. John Wayne, an ardent conservative and anti-communist, called High Noon "the most un-American thing I've seen in my whole life. I didn't think a good marshall was going to run around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking everyone to help. And who saves him? His quaker wife. This isn't my idea of a good western." (8" x 9", black ink print)

Midnight Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy marks a turning point in American cinema. It's the only X-Rated movie to ever win a Best Picture Oscar. It also signifies the moment when film shifted from studio control to an independent auteur era.

Dustin Hoffman plays Ratso Rizzo, a crippled, two-bit con artist suffering from consumption. He befriends a sexually ambiguous cowboy gigolo named Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight). Ratso becomes a pimp to Joe Buck's male prostitute and the two struggle to survive on New York's gritty streets. The film is dark and bleak intertwined with subtle humor. The relationship between Hoffman and Voight captures a platonic love between men rarely seen on screen.

When Producer Jerome Hellman was casting the lead roles, he came across Dustin Hoffman performing in an Off-Broadway play called Eh? Hoffman agreed to play Ratso Rizzo but it took a year for screenwriter Waldo Salt to write the script and another year for Hellman and Director John Schlesinger to raise the funds. During that time Hoffman starred in The Graduate and became an overnight star.

After seeing The Graduate, John Schlesinger felt Hoffman was too clean cut and collegiate to play Ratso. Hoffman asked Schlesinger to meet him at a filthy Times Square coffee shop at night. Hoffman came in character dressed in a dirty raincoat with slicked back hair and several days stubble. Hoffman begged for money, unrecognized by Schlesinger. When Hoffman finally revealed himself, Schlesinger agreed that Hoffman would "do quite well."

Hoffman relished the seedy nature of Ratso Rizzo which was the polar opposite of his ultra-preppy Benjamin Braddock character in The Graduate. (Has any actor ever had two greater first roles than Ratso Rizzo and Benjamin Braddock?) When casting the role of Joe Buck, the producers initially considered Warren Beatty, Michael Sarrazin, Lee Majors even Elvis Presley. They scoured Off-Broadway Theater and eventually found Jon Voight.

There was a charged chemistry between Hoffman and Voight. Voight traveled to Texas to study small-town good ole boys, appropriating local wardrobe and a southern accent. Hoffman hung out in the Bowery and studied street people. He obsessed over character details like Ratso's walk and his consumptive cough. He put a stone in his shoe giving him a forced limp and he donned a stained white jacket found in a bus station dumpster.

The film's most memorable scene where Hoffman screams at a cab driver "I'm walking here" was improvised and shot without permits. The drug-fueled warehouse party scene was staged by Andy Warhol and it featured prominent "Factory" personalities Viva, Ultraviolet and Paul Morrissey. Warhol planned to act in the scene himself but shortly before filming he was shot in the stomach by Valerie Solanas.

John Schlesinger needed a theme song for the film.  Bob Dylan wrote "Lay Lady Lay" expressly for the movie but Schlesinger felt it didn't work.  The singer Nilsson proposed the song "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City," but Schlesinger preferred Nilsson's cover of the Fred Neil song "Everybody's Talkin'."  The song went on to be a hit and became synonymous with Midnight Cowboy.

When production on Cowboy finally ended, Schlesinger feared the film was a disaster. By the end of the first screening for United Artists when Ratso was dead in the bus with Joe Buck's arm around his shoulders the theater was dead silent. Everyone was crying. The newly-created Ratings Board gave the film an X-Rating due to homosexual overtones, drug use and nudity. Critic Rex Reed wrote that "the film is a collage of screaming, crawling, vomiting humanity" while Roger Ebert scribed "it's a vulgar exercise in fashionable cinema." This only helped spread the buzz. Ticket lines stretched around the block. Audiences gave standing ovations.

Midnight Cowboy received 7 Oscar Nominations and won 3: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. It beat out the favorite Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Today the film is rightly viewed as an American Classic. (5" x 6", black ink print)