Trivia

Lee Van Cleef was originally hired to play Deputy Marshal Harvey Pell. However, producer Stanley Kramer decided that his nose was too "hooked", which made him look like a villain, and told him to get it fixed. Van Cleef refused, and Lloyd Bridges got the part. Van Cleef was given the smaller role of gunman Jack Colby, one of the Miller gang.

There was some question as to the casting of Gary Cooper, since he was 51 and Grace Kelly, playing his wife, was only 21, despite this being fairly commonplace for the period in which this film was set.

Producer Stanley Kramer first offered the leading role of Will Kane to Gregory Peck, who turned it down because he felt it was too similar to The Gunfighter (1950). Other actors who turned down the role included Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Montgomery Clift, and Burt Lancaster.

Among other accomplishments, the film was a milestone in scoring. It introduced the idea of a theme song to be marketed separately from the movie, and to be a motif for the instrumental score throughout the film. Tex Ritter (John Ritter's father) sang the song "Do Not Forsake Me", whose lyrics are from the point of view of the hero appealing to his new wife, Amy, to stay with him.

John Wayne set up and ran an "anti-Communist" organization for the film industry. He strongly disliked this movie because he knew it was an allegory for blacklisting, which he and his friend Ward Bond had strongly and actively supported. Twenty years later he was still criticizing it, in his controversial May 1971 interview with "Playboy" Magazine, during which he claimed that Gary Cooper had thrown his marshal's badge to the ground and stepped on it. He also stated he would never regret having driven blacklisted screenwriter Carl Foreman out of Hollywood. The fact is that while Kane threw his badge to the ground, he did not step on it.

Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly had an affair that lasted for the duration of filming.

Gregory Peck, an activist liberal Democrat who strongly opposed blacklisting, later said that turning down this film was the biggest regret of his career, although he modestly added that he didn't think he could have played the lead character as well as Gary Cooper did.

Little to no make-up was used on Gary Cooper's face. The thinking was that the lines on his face would emphasize how worried his character was.

This film was intended as an allegory for the failure by some of the Hollywood community to stand up to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) during Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hunt to find "Communists" in the film industry. . Writer Carl Foreman himself was summoned to appear before the committee due to prior membership of the American Communist Party, and was subsequently blacklisted when he refused to name other members.

Though he was supposed to be the older man, at 45 Lon Chaney Jr. was five years younger than Gary Cooper.

Gary Cooper took a cut in salary to help this get made, taking $50,000 plus a share in the profits instead of his customary $250.000.

Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) was originally named Will Doane. The name was changed to Will Kane because Katy Jurado had difficulty pronouncing the name Will Doane.

Screenwriter Carl Foreman was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee shortly after the film came out. In fact, he had fled to England by the time the film was finished.

Gary Cooper had a bleeding ulcer at the time of filming.

Ben Miller is played by Sheb Wooley. Wooley, in one form or another, has appeared in more movies than any other actor in "High Noon". This is due to a recording of his "yelping" scream for another movie. The scream was so good that it was saved and reused for other films, including such blockbusters as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). As of July, 2018. it has been used 386 times. This is commonly known as the "Wilhelm scream" and was named after a character in the third film in which the sound was used.

Each scene took only between one and three takes.

In 2007 the American Film Institute ranked this as the #27 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Ranked #2 on the American Film Institute's list of the ten greatest films in the genre "Western" in June 2008.

Although John Wayne often called the film "un-American" because of its portrayal of townspeople as cowardly, and had passed on the lead role for that reason, when he collected Gary Cooper's Best Actor Oscar on his behalf at the The 25th Annual Academy Awards (1953) he complained that he wasn't offered the part himself. He later teamed up with director Howard Hawks to make Rio Bravo (1959) like one of his own westerns (featuring brave and dutiful citizens) as a response.

Katy Jurado says, "One year without seeing you" in Spanish, to which Gary Cooper replies, "Yes, I know."

The church scene in which Kane tries to solicit help is directly parodied in Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974).

Production took 38 days, including ten days of rehearsal.

Marshal Will Kane was supposed to be about 30, although Gary Cooper was 50 when the film was made.

Bill Clinton's all-time favorite film. He watched it 17 times during his two terms as President of the United States.

Gary Cooper was reluctant to do his big fight scene with Lloyd Bridges, as he was suffering from back pain at the time.

The theme song, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'", was originally going to be used throughout the movie. Stanley Kramer, in his autobiography "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: A Life in Hollywood", wrote: "I can't begin to calculate how much that song did for the picture, but my admiration for it, at first, led me astray. I became so enamored of the song I overused it, allowing it to cover some of Gary Cooper's most dramatic moments. When we finally had the picture ready for its first preview, which was to be in Inglewood (California), the song was everywhere in the movie. By the time we got halfway through the showing, the audience was obviously restless. Before we were three quarters of the way through, I knew why. At each repetition of the song, they started to laugh and then mockingly follow the lyrics. After the disastrous preview, everyone said I should get rid of 'that damned song', that it made a joke of the whole picture. Fortunately, I didn't agree. I insisted that the song was great, and that I'd simply used it too much. I redid the soundtrack and forsook at least half of the 'Do Not Forsake Me's'. The result was miraculous."

Former US Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton cited this as their favorite film of all time.

Jack Elam was not originally in the cast. After viewing the first full cut, the filmmakers realized the climactic gunfight didn't work. They resumed production with Gary Cooper and new cast member Elam. Elam recalled, "I knew [Cooper] very well. They also had some extras in the bar. We went back to the jail cell and did a few shots of me in the cell with Cooper walking around and seeing me in there snoring, and then they did a shot where he lets me out of jail, and I go into the bar, people are coming out because it's high noon. They did about a full minute of me in the bar doing my drunken clown act. I'm taking drinks and putting drinks under my arms and all that. They were going to cut back and forth between me and the gunfight. But then they turned the picture loose with the regular gunfight before they added our stuff, and it got rave reviews. so they never put that stuff in. The only part they put in was to establish who I was, and the only thing you see of me in the bar was when I was going in and everyone else was coming out. The credits were already written up when I went to work. They didn't bother to put my name in, and that's why I didn't get the credit. But I was very happy because I got to work two days, and there was about a half a day with Cooper and me, and what a gentleman he was! There was about a day of me going into the bar and then of me just wandering around the bar. I understand there are some videocassettes of 'High Noon', but I don't think you can buy them in a store, where those scenes of mine are included in the outtakes, but I have never seen them. The last thing you see of me in the movie is when I'm going in the bar and the people are rushing out."

The character of Will Kane was based on Carl Foreman. Foreman was in the process of being blacklisted by Hollywood due to his previous Communist sympathies and his refusal to "name names" of others he knew who were also Communists . When he sought help from colleagues in the hope that they would vouch for him, most refused or had a long list of conditions. Foreman based many of the conversations that Will Kane has in the movie on his own experiences of being turned down for help.

The climax begins with a long pullback from Gary Cooper, walking the dusty streets of the desolate town. Fred Zinnemann achieved this by using a long crane that he borrowed from fellow director George Stevens. If you look closely, you can see, in the upper frame, the nearby Warner Brothers studio lot. The same Western set on the Columbia Pictures lot was used by Zinnemann as a Hawaiian locale in From Here to Eternity (1953).

The steady drum beat signifying confrontation in Frankie Laine's recording of "High Noon" was later employed by Roy Orbison in his 1961 hit, "Running Scared".

Carl Foreman had already worked on this screenplay when he and Stanley Kramer both read John Cunningham's short story "The Tin Star" in "Harper's Magazine". Since it was so similar to the script, they decided to option it to avoid any charges of plagiarism. The two decided to call the film "High Noon", which had once been the temporary working title for Home of the Brave (1949), a previous film produced by Kramer and written by Foreman. However, it was Foreman, not Kramer, who actually negotiated the screen rights to Cunningham's short story. If Kramer had bought the story, the rights would have undoubtedly cost much more than the $25,000 Foreman paid, because publishers would have been well aware of Kramer's reputation as a successful producer.

In one scene, a posted bill for a production called "Mazeppa" is visible. Mazeppa was a literary character (written about by Lord Byron, among others) who was tied to the back of a horse by his townsmen and countrymen. The horse was then whipped and sent out into the country, carrying the helpless Mazeppa with it. In one version of the story, Mazeppa survived, joined his former enemies and returned with them to try to conquer his former town and country. This is somewhat reflected in the situation of Frank Miller, and even, perhaps, of Will Kane, who at the outset of the film is hastily sent off by his townsmen in a horse-drawn vehicle, with considerable reluctance on his part, before he decides to return (to little thanks from them).

Much of the film was shot in the gold rush town of Columbia, CA. It is a state park right by Sonora on California Highway 49.

Prior to the movie's release, Gary Cooper was widely felt to be too old for his character. The movie's popularity, and a Best Actor Academy Award, clearly proved them wrong.

There were only two characters in town who actually offered to help Kane fight despite the odds: Jimmy, the drunk with an eye patch (played by William Newell), and Johnny, a young boy (played by Ralph Reed).

This film was selected into the National Film Registry in 1989 (the first year of inductions) for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Floyd Crosby won a Golden Globe award for best black and white cinematography for this film, but was not nominated for an Oscar in that category.

Three decades after Grace Kelly and Lloyd Bridges appeared in this film, Bridges starred as her father in the biopic Grace Kelly (1983).

As inspiration for the film's look, Fred Zinnemann and cinematographer Floyd Crosby studied the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.

Between takes, Gary Cooper would chat with the crew or snooze underneath a tree.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

The only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year to be also nominated for Best Song.

In the French-dubbed version, the song "High Noon" ("Si toi aussi tu m'abandonnes") is performed by Claude Dupuis.

Although the film is usually described as an allegorical attack on McCarthyism and producer Stanley Kramer liked to present himself as a fearless liberal, he did not give a credit to the blacklisted actor Howland Chamberlin, although the latter has a very important role in the film.

A little while after the Hadleyville railroad station arrival scene, the town's name again appears on the town bank's nameplate. It simply says "Hadleyville Bank".

Near the start of the film you can see black smoke in the distance behind the church and rising from a fixed location. The church is the St Joseph's Catholic Church, which still stands in Tuolumne City, CA. The smoke is coming from the Tuolumne Fire Protection District, located a quarter-mile to the southwest, which still exists. The area in back of the TFPD was used for the safe burning of refuse.

Grace Kelly's character was named Amy Fowler and she and Marshal Will Kane Gary Cooper were newlyweds as the film began. In the series The Big Bang Theory (2007) Mayim Bialik's character's name was Amy Farrah Fowler and married Sheldon Cooper Jim Parsons before the series ended.

In what was a rather unusual move for westerns of the time, Kane reloads after firing exactly six shots. In all, he fires ten times during the gun battle and Amy fires once.

Lee Van Cleef who played "Jack Colby", one of the three outlaws coming into town to kill Gary Cooper,'s Will Kane, literally played the same type of role in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). In that film he plays one out of thee outlaws coming to town to kill Kirk Douglas' character, Doc Holliday. In both films he winds up being killed.