Grace
Page 8
Carl Foreman wrote the screenplay for High Noon, basing it on the eight-page short story “The Tin Star” by John W. Cunningham. Stanley Kramer Productions was responsible for producing the film for the United Artists Studio, the smallest of the major US studios. (In 1961, United Artists started producing the James Bond film series to worldwide acclaim and popularity.) With a budget of $750,000 and twenty-eight days for filming, High Noon was a low-budget production by Hollywood standards. The filming lasted from September 5 to October 13, 1951. The interior scenes were shot at Motion Picture Center Hollywood, and the difficult, very hot and dusty exterior scenes were shot off-site. Besides Columbia Ranch on the film lot in Burbank, not far from the Warner Bros. Studios, the outside shots were filmed at the historic site of the Mother Lode near Sonora, about 300 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Particularly for the two supporting actresses, Grace Kelly and Katy Jurado, who had to wear heavy period costumes, the more intense scenes were difficult to endure.
High Noon had a run time of eighty-five minutes, and its story was told in real time while strictly adhering to the classical dramatic order of unity of time, place, and action. The story begins at about 10:40 a.m. and ends shortly after 12:00 p.m. The time experienced by the viewer is practically synchronized with that of the actors. During the course of the movie, Will Kane’s gaze and that of the others constantly returns to a particular clock. Time is “perceived as an enemy, shown by obsessive use of clocks [ . . . ]; clocks looming larger as time slips by, pendulums moving more and more slowly until time finally stands still, gradually creating an unreal, dreamlike, almost hypnotic effect of suspended animation.”98 This is how Fred Zinnemann himself described it.
The film tells the story of Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who only moments after his marriage to the young Quaker Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), learns that the dangerous outlaw Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) is free again. Kane had put him in prison five years ago, and Miller had sworn revenge. Miller is on his way on the noon train to the western town of Hadleyville in order to meet Kane, and to terrorize and shoot up the frontier town. Miller’s three fellow outlaws are already at the Hadleyville train station and are waiting in the grueling heat for their leader. Kane has just promised his wife, who abhors any form of violence, that today, Sunday, the day his term as sheriff ends, he will lay down his tin star and never use a gun again. The wedding guests advise them to immediately leave Hadleyville before noon arrives. However, just after they leave town Kane turns back; he wants to surrender himself to Frank Miller. Amy then decides to wait for the noon train and to depart with the luggage. However, at the moment that she wants to board the train, a shot is fired. Amy turns around. In the meantime, a confrontation between the two enemies is unavoidable. Thus, it comes to a final showdown, in the course of which Amy is the one who, despite all of her religious beliefs, shoots one of the bandits in the back and kills him. Ultimately, this leads to Kane’s rescue. After the four gangsters are defeated in a street devoid of any people, Amy and Kane are surrounded and celebrated by the town’s citizens. However, Kane now throws down his sheriff’s star at the feet of those who refused to help or support him in any way. For a second time, he leaves the town with Amy. This time they do not return.
This unusual western had its New York premiere on July 24, 1952, and opened across the United States on July 30. High Noon set a high standard for its entire genre, becoming one of the most successful and honored films of the 1950s. Even today, Fred Zinnemann’s black-and-white drama counts as an undeniable western classic of its genre. In March 1953, High Noon was honored with four Oscars. Gary Cooper won his second Academy Award for Best Actor, and another award went to Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad for their distinctive, stylistic editing. Finally, two awards were given for the film’s score. Dimitri Tiomkin received a golden statuette for Best Music, and both he and lyricist Ned Washington won the award for Best Original Song. The film was also nominated for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Prior to the hosting of the Academy Awards, the film had also been nominated for a total of seven Golden Globes, winning four Globes at the 1953 Golden Globe Awards.
The movie was hailed as a great success by both the press and the public. Even for Hollywood, it is rare when art and commerce, the box office and the critics, are in accord. For United Artists, this low-budget production was, in hindsight, an important film.
Only one person was not satisfied with herself and viewed her achievement very critically. This was a trait that often reared its head during the course of her six-year film career. It was a defining attribute that was already evident in Philadelphia. This self-criticism was not motivated by the reviews that only discussed her in one or two lines, or by Gary Cooper’s enormous success because of the film, which gave new life to his flagging career. The cause seems to have been that, even in the earliest viewings of the films, she found her screen presence to be simply bad, flat, and expressionless: “Everything was so clear working with Gary Cooper. When I look into his face, I can see everything he is thinking. But when I look into my own face, I see absolutely nothing.”99
To the contrary, when asked by Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, Gary Cooper recognized the potential, talent, and effectiveness of his young costar: “She was very serious about her work, had her eyes and ears open. She was trying to learn, you could see that. You can tell if a person really wants to be an actress. She was one of those people you could get that feeling about, and she was very pretty. It didn’t surprise me when she was a big success.”100
Although Grace Kelly appears in many scenes throughout High Noon, there are two that are particularly dialogue-heavy and critical to the film. Both scenes epitomize her role as the young, shy yet determined Quaker, Amy Kane. This mixture of uncertain timidity and firm determination also corresponded with Grace’s actual personality.
The first scene takes place in the Marshal’s office. As he frequently does throughout the film, Kane glances up at the clock, which shows the time to be 10:50. In seventy minutes, the train will arrive at the station. It is a crucial moment: Will he finally leave the town with Amy, who has already packed the wagon and turned it around, or will he face his enemy? Kane mistakenly believes that people will stand beside him and help him. Kane doesn’t realize that trusting his fellow townspeople will turn out to be a fatal error. Amy and Kane have been married less than an hour, and already they must decide their future together:
Will: “You know I’ve only got an hour and I’ve got lots to do. Stay at the hotel until it is over.”
Amy: “No, I won’t be here when it’s over. You’re asking me to wait an hour to find out if I’m going to be a wife or a widow. I say it’s too long to wait! I won’t do it! I mean it! If you won’t go with me now, I’ll be on that train when it leaves here.”
Will: “I’ve got to stay.”101
After this, she looks at him mutely, stonily, before walking out the door. She climbs into the horse wagon and drives away, as he stares after her. Exactly at this moment, the singer Tex Ritter begins to sing the melancholy theme song, “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’.”
This is Grace Kelly’s first long scene of dialogue. Amy’s final words, before she leaves the sheriff’s office, could be considered a monologue, a despairingly hopeful plea.
The second scene takes place at 11:45. It involves a visit between Amy and Helen Ramirez, who had previously been romantically involved with Will Kane. Helen lectures her on the moral duty of a wife, in this case, one who had lost her family in a similar fight for justice:
Helen: “What kind of woman are you? How can you leave him like this? Does the sound of the guns frighten you that much?”
Amy: “I’ve heard guns. My father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that didn’t help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I watched him die. That’s when I became a Quaker. I don’t care who’s right or who’s wrong. There’s got to be some better way for people to liv
e. Will knows how I feel about it.”102
In this sequence, Grace Kelly plays her part with visible and audible excitement; her voice shakes and vibrates. Also here, she combines in her portrayal an innocent naïveté and a determined vehemence. Despite her youthfulness, Amy has already experienced deep loss in her life, and it has taught her how to survive; she knows exactly what she wants and what she does not. This, too, was true for Grace herself.
It is interesting to observe, over the course of her short acting career, the parallels that existed between the women that Grace played in her movies and the woman she was in her own life. A great distance separates Louise Anne Fuller of Fourteen Hours and Amy Fowler Kane of High Noon and certainly also Linda Nordley of Mogambo from Lisa Carol Fremont of Rear Window (1954) or Francie Stevens of To Catch a Thief. These female characters ultimately reveal the transformation that Grace herself underwent during these critical years of her life. It was a process whereby she became a woman, gaining self-awareness and emancipation.
Between January and March 1956, Grace made her eleventh and final film, Charles Walters’s High Society (1956). Her engagement to Prince Rainier III of Monaco had been announced in early January, and the great, festive fairy-tale wedding lay before her in April. She was again a mixture of shyness and determination, as she had been when she played Amy Kane. However, now she knew exactly what she wanted. She had freed herself from Philadelphia and the constraints of that place, and she had matured into a lady whose style and elegance were neither artificial or insincere, but were instead true and authentic. In the world of appearances—which included both the microcosm of Hollywood and the jet-setting culture of Monaco—Grace’s great concern was, first and foremost, to be true to herself, to represent her actual nature, and to not become lost in mere appearances.
By the time that High Noon was filmed, Gary Cooper (1901–1961) was a world-renowned success—a legend—although by 1956 his star had begun to wane. He had acted in films such as Sam Woods’s adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz (1954). Toward the end of his career, he starred with Audrey Hepburn in Billy Wilder’s wonderfully poetic, black-and-white, Parisian film, Love in the Afternoon (1957).
The 6’3” giant was fifty at the time of filming, while Grace was eight months shy of twenty-two. Twenty-eight years lay between them, something that did not disturb Grace in the least. The majority of the men with whom she had affairs—affairs which lasted anywhere from a few weeks to several months—were at least twice as old as her, if not older. Although this is only one among several reasons for her choices, the unreciprocated, unerringly loyal love for her father Jack Kelly surely had an effect on her relationships with men.
Throughout her life, “Gracie” sought recognition and support, protection and security, from her larger-than-life father. However, Jack Kelly failed her in all of this, and as a result, she suffered an entire life trying time and time again to compensate for this lack of affection. This was especially recognizable in her relationships with much older men. “I prefer older men. They are more interesting. I like people who know more than me,” as she once significantly commented about herself.103 However, the wound never went away: “Her father must have been a monster,” Robert Dornhelm supposed.104
During the stressful and tense filming of High Noon, Cooper’s health was not good. He suffered from back pain, arthritis, and a stomach ulcer. Two months before filming began, he had an operation. His often uncompromising, almost painful physicality as Sheriff Will Kane in the final version of the film may reflect his actual state of health. Additionally, he was also psychologically plagued by his temporary separation from Rocky, his wife of many years. Cooper had married Veronica “Rocky” Balfe, who acted under the stage name Sandra Shaw, in 1933, and despite several tumultuous patches in their relationship, he remained married to her until his death in 1961. Another burden was the ending of Cooper’s two-year affair with the young Broadway actress Patricia Neal with whom he had previously starred in King Vidor’s The Fountainhead (1949) and Michael Curtiz’s Bright Leaf (1950). This relationship had been both turbulent and somewhat destructive to both of their careers.105 They had been “plunged, for more than two years, into a maelstrom of guilt, regret, fleeting happiness and underlying despair.”106
In High Noon, Cooper, the myth of the upright man, came across as sorrowful and broken, and this was obvious to everyone on the set. Perhaps Grace Kelly seemed to him a perfect diversion. They spent evenings and weekends at the Chateau Marmont, or cruising through Hollywood in Cooper’s silver Jaguar. Grace’s younger sister Lizanne commented on their alleged affair: “Grace was infatuated with Gary Cooper. She was in awe of him, very star-struck.”107
There was also a rumor that, during filming, Grace had an affair not only with Gary Cooper, but with director Fred Zinnemann as well.108 In contrast to Alfred Hitchcock, neither Zinnemann, nor John Ford on the set of Mogambo, took special care with Grace; they gave her hardly any directorial direction and did not spend much time working on her portrayal. This rumored affair seems unlikely in light of the somewhat tense relationship between the director and the actress, in addition to Grace’s noticeable reticence and reserve on set. Instead, the rumor seems more likely to be the product of the overactive imaginations of Hollywood sensationalists. Despite that, Hollywood author and friend of Cooper’s, Robert Slatzer, both reported and corroborated the story of the two affairs. As Stanley Kramer quite explicitly commented, Grace seemed to deliberately keep to herself on set.109
Furthermore, Gene Lyons was waiting for her in Denver. In the summer of 1951, Grace had acted with him in ten performances, including T.S. Eliot’s comedy The Cocktail Party (1949), over ten weeks for the Elitch Gardens Theatre. The work together was grueling but fun, and despite initial quarrels and some hesitation, Gene Lyons fell in love with Grace, having already separated from the actress Lee Grant. He was set to return to New York, to television, as was Grace.
The action in High Noon is played out against the melody of Dimitri Tiomkin’s melancholy title song. Sometimes the instrumental version of the song is played, and sometimes Tex Ritter’s sonorous rendition of the lyrics can be heard. Besides the guitar, the song is dominated by the unique, catchy rhythm of the Hammond Novachord, the first analog, polyphonic synthesizer, which was invented in 1939. Tiomkin’s song, with its double connotations—that of individual fate combined with the fate of the community—functions as the theme song for High Noon:
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’
On this, our weddin’ day
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’
Wait, wait along
( . . . )
Oh, to be torn twixt love and duty
Supposin’ I lose my fair-haired beauty
Look at that big hand move along
Nearin’ high noon
( . . . )
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’
You made that promise when we wed
Do not forsake me, oh my darlin’
Although you’re grievin’, I can’t be leavin’
Until I shoot Frank Miller dead110
Born in Ukraine, Dimitri Tiomkin (1894–1979) immigrated to the United States in 1925, after completing his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music. He created a timeless composition in his award-winning score for High Noon. Other musical scores by Tiomkin include those for King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946) and Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948). The score for Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Tiomkin’s first composition for a Hitchcock film. Other compositions by Tiomkin were used in Strangers on a Train (1950), I Confess (1953), and Grace Kelly’s first movie for Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder. “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’” was later translated into German under the title “Sag, Warum willst Du von mir gehen.” Both Bruce Low and Peter Alexander produced recorded versions of this song.
In the first lines of the first verse, one can already feel the double laye
rs of fear under which the protagonist now lives. There is the fear of being abandoned because he has sacrificed what he loves most for the communal good. But there is also the fear that the community, whose well-being he has protected for so long, will turn its back on him and likewise leave him. “Oh to be torn twixt love and duty” is the central focus of Ned Washington’s lyrics. This short, simple sentiment describes the entire, complex dilemma in which Sheriff Will Kane finds himself throughout the entire movie. His young wife Amy also finds herself in the same predicament. This dilemma is, first of all, a moral one, but it is also a sociopolitical issue: the individual versus the group. Hadleyville represents a society that looks away as soon as something appears on the horizon that could possibly disrupt the existing system or threaten the established balance of power. Will Kane, as the individual, is ultimately abandoned by the community, experiencing a kind of excommunication. Thus, the threat comes not only from outside the community but also from the inside. Nonetheless, this is the figure who tries to represent the rights of the community and who is prepared to make a great personal sacrifice. Kane becomes the lonely outcast, an outlaw in the true sense of the word—the one outside of the law.
Several scenes in Fred Zinnemann’s anti-western clearly reveal this loss: the double abandonment of the antihero, Will Kane. When Kane stands in Hadleyville’s Main Street, directly in front of the sheriff’s office, under the blistering sun, no one can be seen far and wide. Sweat beads on his careworn face and forehead under his black cowboy hat. The camera first shows him in a tight close-up. Only his face can be seen. Then, the camera pulls back slowly, and the scene in the frame grows larger. At the same time, the camera pans backward, and the crane then pulls up to gain a bird’s eye view of the scene. Up there, the shot is held. It is a shot that shows the entire street and most of the town. This long camera sequence takes place in the seventieth minute of the film and lasts thirty-five seconds, without a single cut.