The Making of High Noon
In 1946, the Allies had just won the war and the United Nations was a brand new entity. Screenwriter Carl Foreman wanted to write an allegory about the need for world unity to defeat unchecked aggression and uphold democracy. The story was about a lawman recruiting local townspeople to fight a gang of violent outlaws. Then the Cold War started. The spirit of cooperation between the United States and Russia was replaced by an era of anxiety and mistrust.
While Foreman worked on the first draft of what would become High Noon, American politics shifted right. Opportunistic Republicans accused domestic communist sympathizers of threatening 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.
FBI head J. Edgar Hoover called communists “masters of deceit.” His paranoia had a seed of truth since the American Communist Party took secret marching orders from Joseph Stalin. However, most American communists were not agents of a foreign power. Like Bernie Sanders supporters today, they responded to the inequality of American wealth distribution. They desired change through peaceful means, not revolution.
Carl Foreman…
