HIGH NOON on 6/10 from LionsGate? (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Robin9]

Could I very quietly slip in a request for a restored DVD of A Man Alone, a little-known Republic Western directed by Ray Milland?

 

[DanMel]

Classic Flix has the details up for that box set and what bonus features it will contain:

BONUS FEATURES:

Audio Commentary with Maria Cooper-Janis, Jonathan Foreman , Tim Zinnemann and John Ritter
“Inside High Noon” – 50-Minute Documentary on the Making of High Noon
“Tex Ritter: A Visit to Carthage, Texas” – Portrait Piece on the Tex Ritter Museum
Full-Length Tex Ritter Performance of Oscar-Winning Original Song “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’” on the Jimmy Dean TV Show
“The Making of High Noon” Featurette
“Behind High Noon” Featurette
Radio Broadcast with Tex Ritter

However, the story is wrong on the site as they state it will be pretty much the same dvd as the 2002 release with and added 10 min feature called behind High Noon. Behind High Noon was on the 2002 release and their information is wrong. There will be a new 50 min documentory titled Inside High Noon that was produced by the Gary Cooper and movie expert John Mulholland.

Welcome to MODA Entertainment.com -- DOCUMENTARY PRODUCTIONS -- Casablanca DVD

The documentary may not be for everyone though as it may get a great deal into the troubles of John Wayne trying to close down the set and threating to blacklist Gary Cooper with Gary telling him to go to hell and all that. It fits right in with my view as a Gary Cooper extremest and no fan to John Wayne but may not sit right with some others here. If you want to get a feel for what the documentary may be like there is a long article that the film Journal posted by John Mulholland on the truth to the behind the scenes troubles on the set of High Noon and Gary's joke on John Wayne by asking him to accept the oscar if he should win. Gary's conversation to Anthony Quin on the set of Blowing Wild is discussed with Gary having reported to say "I wonder what that SOB will say if I win". I'm not sure how much of this John will write into a 50 min documentary but I hope it is all discussed.

From the Cheap Seats… » Letter From America…

 

[John Hodson]

I'm a fan of the work of both Wayne and Cooper and it sits alright with me; if anyone wants to read John Mullholland's comments alluded to by DanMel above, you'll find them in my Filmjournal blog here.

Fascinating stuff, though I doubt much of that will be included in the documentary - we'll see.

 

[DanMel]

I think it will cover the Blacklist controversy fairly well as an email from John dated July 21st 2007 stated it would:

"We did a behind the scenes doc on High Noon for Paramount last year --
interviewed Clinton, even; man was he articulate on High Noon, so bright
and full of boundless curiosity. Paramount was going to release
a double disc dvd on Noon. But they lost the US rights, somehow, and
will not have them back, at the earliest, until next year, maybe not even
then. So here we sit with this one hour Noon doc, covering everything,
especially the blacklist controversy, Cooper's extraordinary courage in
putting his career on the line for Carl Foreman both during and after
the film was finished, etc.

Frustrating, indeed!"

Also on about page for John Mulholand it states this about the documentary that leads me to believe it will be discussed in some detail:

"Mulholland also wrote and directed both: Inside High Noon, on the behind-the-scenes controversy during the filming of High Noon; and Of God & Country: Sergeant York."

ICONSRadio.com :: ICONS Radio Hour :: Hosted by John Mulholland & Stephen Bogart :: ABOUT

What I gather from these two postings is that this is not only going to be a typical documentary on a film but one that may be focused on the behind the scenes controversy with John Wayne and the whole black list thing and Cooper's involvment. 50 min on this would cover everthing that was mentioned on your site about High Noon and then some.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

Woah, sounds great... I think I'm actually anticipating the documentary more than the feature itself now, but with over 9 hours of footage I wonder if they're release an extended cut as a separate standalone release down the line?

 

[Charles_Y]

If this is the cover there is nothing especially wrong with it other than that Cooper faced a "gang" not one man, so that is misleading. However, it probably would give newbies to the film the wrong idea that it is a action filled shoot out with little else on its mind, which is certainly NOT the case.

Previous DVD edition covers were a little weak and this seems a step in the right direction to me. I know this is a negligible point for many but there are some of us who DO obsess over this issue a tad. Bear with us folks...

The extras look ok but I've felt they could always do better with this title.

 

[John Hodson]

And we should all thank God that Lionsgate didn't let Legend loose on it with their crayoning set a la It's A Wonderul Life...

 

[Charles H]

Lionel Chetwynd wrote and directed a little-seen and never available on video feature documentary DARKNESS AT HIGH NOON: THE CARL FOREMAN DOCUMENTS (2002). It is a provocative film that casts both John Wayne and Stanley Kramer in an unfavorable light and it is based on the letters of Carl Foreman whose future Blacklisted career was most impacted by the McCarthy era's political reaction to HIGH NOON. I haven't seen it but the imdb's reactions to it suggest that this would be (have been) the most significant extra to the SE.

 

[oscar_merkx]

I am really looking forward to see this

 

[John Hodson]

I guess that Paramount will have had some hand in this release (it's their restoration that will be used after all), and would, I suspect, veto anything that shows Wayne - still one of their major money spinners - in too bad a light (and holding licenses for many of Wayne's Republic films, maybe Lionsgate feel the same). I've not seen 'Darkness at High Noon', though I've read a bit about it, and would love to do so; the most charitable comment I can make is that it wasn't the Duke's finest hour.

 

[Robert Crawford]

However, is that story told from just one side of it? IMO, there is always two sides of a story and both need to be told in order to get a real sense of what happened as to Wayne's role.





Crawdaddy

 

[John Hodson]

The activities of the Motion Picture Alliance for The Preservation of American Ideals is well documented, Wayne's support and membership of it is also on the record; the extent of Wayne's activities in the Alliance has been the subject of debate for a while. Roberts and Olsen say he was forgiving of those 'willing to be forgiven'. Carl Foreman was unrepentent.

His trying to stop the filming of 'High Noon', to blacklist participants not only forms part of 'Darkness at High Noon', but may also be included in the new documentary, it's certainly come out in John Mulholland's research. If Wayne is guilty of trying to wreck the careers of those he suspected, if not of being of the left, but simply associating with such, it doesn't help the Wayne industry much for that dirty linen to be washed in public.

I can't really judge what is 'guilty' and what is not, the heresay evidence doesn't make for appetising reading, but in mitigation the climate of the time was pretty hysterical all round.

However, I have seen Big Jim McLain - ouch!

 

[Robert Crawford]

It seems to me that people have already judge Wayne as guilty.

 

[John Hodson]

It's very difficult when one's heroes are alleged to be merely human, if not of having feet of clay.

Let him throw the first stone...

 

[Robert Crawford]

Only problem is that I never admired any actor enough for them to be classified as my hero. They're actors, playing various roles which makes it difficult for me to hero worship any of them.





Crawdaddy

 

[Charles H]

As I understand it DARKNESS AT HIGH NOON is told from the viewpoint of the Foreman family. I believe that I read in a Variey review that Chetwynd is politically conservative and that the real news in the documentary is Stanley Kramer's conduct--not Wayne's.

Does anyone know why HIGH NOON, which portends to be in "real time," begins at 11:30 am per the clock with the train arriving at HIGH NOON is actually only 84 minutes long?

 

[Robert Crawford]

From memory, I think the time per the clock is something like 10:35 a.m.

Edit: Oops, after reading your post again, I realized you weren't talking about the beginning of the film when Frank Miller's gang arrives in town, but instead the train's arrival. Anyhow, it's close enough to the timeline so I don't understand your inquiry?

 

[John Hodson]

I wish I were so detached; hero he was, is, and probably will be. I'm still that little boy with the silver six guns really...

 

[Robert Crawford]

After thinking about the timeline some more isn't the train's arrival on-time with it's noon scheduled arrival? Can anybody confirmed.