The Women of High Noon: A Revisionist View

THE WOMEN OF HIGH NOON: A REVISIONIST VIEW by Don Graham* "My family didn't want me to marry Will in the first place. . . I seem to make them unhappy no matter what I do. Back home they think I'm very strange. I'm a feminist. You know, women's rights—things like that. . ." Amy Fowler Kane in the screenplay High Noon1 Traditionally Western movies have not granted women characters much strength, respect, or importance except as they serve to support the stronger male roles. Indeed, one critic, Philip French, has reduced the role of women in Westerns to a pair of stereotypes: "In the model, traditional Western there is the unsullied pioneer heroine: virtuous wife, rancher's virginal daughter, schoolteacher, etc.; on the other hand there is the saloon girl with her entourage of dancers."2 Until recently, Western movies that departed from these ironclad stereotypes were more notable for their eccentricities than for their artistry.3 The Oxbow Incident (1943), a quite inferior film, is, from the viewpoint of women's roles, a misogynie work of the.first order. The saloon girl, Rose Mapen, is a disloyal and dangerous flirt, which does not surprise us, but what does is that there is no counterbalancing image of woman in the film. Jenny Grier, known as Ma, is a travesty of a transvestite, eager to ride with men, hungry to lynch the innocent. Two more intelligent works, Forty Guns (1957) and Johnny Guitar (1953), are special cases, films directed by idiosyncratic auteurs, Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray. Though their women characters are indeed interesting, being manlike and powerful to the fullest degree, yet in the end each heroine must yield her whip or gun to the brave manliness of the film's male *DON GRAHAM, Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin, is the author of The Fiction of Frank Norris: The Aesthetic Context (University of Missouri Press, 1978); co-editor, with William T. Pilkington, of Western Movies (University of New Mexico Press, 1979); and editor of Critical Essays on Frank Norris (G. K. Hall, 1980). 1.Carl Foreman, High Noon in Three Major Screenplays, eds. Marvin WaId and Michael Werner (New York: Globe Book Company, 1972), p. 242. Hereafter all quotations from High Noon are from this text; pagination will be cited parenthetically in the essay. 2.Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), p. 62. 3.In post-Sixties Westerns there have been glimmerings of attempts to redefine the function of women in this male-dominated genre. Comes a Horseman (1978), The Missouri Breaks (1976), Going South (1979), and somewhat earlier, The Hired Hand (1971), should be cited among such efforts. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW243 Don Graham protagonist. None of these films attains either the artistry or the conviction of another Western made during the same era, High Noon (1952). Much celebrated at the time of its release—and much condemned by later critics—High Noon represents a notable advance in the portrayal of women in Westerns.4 Working firmly within generic patterns, High Noon offers some vital and original innovations upon the familiar archetypes. The result is a work that brings new strength and integrity to the hackneyed presentation of women in Western. A glance at the immediate literary source for High Noon shows how the movie changes the masculine emphasis of John M. Cunningham 's pulp formula story, "The Tin Star."5 In Cunningham's story, there is only one woman character, Cecilia Doane, wife of the main character, Sheriff Doane. But, because the wife is dead, her only "appearance" in the story occurs in a scene at her graveside where the aging, arthritic sheriff goes to pay his respects. The rest of Cunningham's story also differs greatly from the version given us by scriptwriter Carl Foreman and director Fred Zimmerman. Cunningham's story is about professionalism, with the main emphasis falling on the old sheriff and his young deputy Toby. Here the sheriff is not deserted; indeed, Toby comes to accept the same idealistic definition of a lawman's vo'cation as the sheriff: a man does a difficult, dangerous job for himself and not for...