WEBVTT - The Wild West 13: Hollywood 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.960 Hey, folks, erin here today, I am the bearer of 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.960 bad news. This episode of Grim and Mile Presents will 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:08.360 be the last, not just of this season, but of 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:11.559 the show. We've covered so much over the past four seasons, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:13.760 and I hope that our journey through the high seas 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.279 and the back roads of America have helped you gain 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:18.919 a better understanding of who we are as a people 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.680 and how nuanced and textured our history is as a nation. 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.040 If this storytelling style is something that you have connected 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:28.440 with over the past couple of years, fear not. There 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.240 are other shows of mine that you can jump right into. 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.120 Cabinet of Curiosities is still going strong, over one hundred 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.280 twenty million downloads into its journey, and of course, my 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.479 dark history podcast Lore is quickly approaching its ninth anniversary 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:45.280 with close to three hundred episodes that are guaranteed to 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.400 leave you feeling a few chills down your spine. There 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.159 are others too. Back in August, the Grim and Mile 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:53.760 team and I launched a brand new weekly show called 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:57.720 That's Just Weird, covering weird news from the past and present, 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.240 along with one big weird news story EA and our 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.800 brand new show called Harlots, which explores the intersection of 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.160 sex and power throughout history, is wrapping up its first 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.720 season in just a few weeks. Here and all of 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.880 those shows, Lore, Cabinet of Curiosities, That's Just Weird, and 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:18.760 Harlots are all available everywhere you get your podcasts. You 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.000 can learn more about all of those shows and so 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:25.280 many others from our past over at Grimandmild dot com, 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:35.200 and now on with the show. To American settlers, the 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.640 West was a land of opportunity. Its soil was rich 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:41.839 with nutrients for growing all kinds of crops. Its hills 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:45.040 and mountains were teeming with fortune just one heave of 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:48.400 the pickaxe away. But even after the gold Rush had 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.600 ended and East Coast transplants moved back home with their 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:55.400 sifting pans between their legs, California still had more to offer. 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.400 In nineteen fifteen, a whole new group of people set 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:02.000 out west to seek their fortune and their freedom. Thanks 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:06.360 to one man, Thomas Edison, filmmakers had gotten their start 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:08.960 in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which was right across the 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.960 Hudson River from New York. The land was cheaper than 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.200 it was in the city, yet still close enough for 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.120 Broadway actors to take the ferry over to make movies. 0:02:17.600 --> 0:02:20.400 But New Jersey was also home to the kinescope patent 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:24.320 holder Thomas Edison. The kinescope was the first motion picture 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:29.120 camera invented, primarily by Edison's employee William Kennedy Dixon, but 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:32.000 Edison held the patent, and he wielded it, along with 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:35.240 many others, like a sword against every filmmaker on the 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:39.000 East Coast. In nineteen oh seven, Edison partnered with several 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:43.200 other patent holders, like camera company Biograph and film manufacturer 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:47.400 Easpin Kodak to create the Motion Picture Patent's Company, otherwise 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.960 known as the Edison Trust. This cartel licensed its patents 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:54.120 out to six of America's largest filmmakers so they could 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.280 make their movies, but those films could not be sold 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.880 directly to distributors. All films had to be rented from 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.919 the Trust, and because all aspects of the process were 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.480 owned essentially by one man, that meant that Edison now 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.360 had a monopoly on filmmaking, and he went after anyone 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.360 caught violating his patents too. Movie houses that showed non 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:19.560 MPPC films were technically violating the law thanks to a 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:23.120 nineteen oh seven court case, and sometimes they found themselves 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.160 shut down by US marshals for doing so. If a 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.680 filmmaker or distributor still didn't get the hint, Edison would 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.799 send gangsters and hired goons to remind them about the patents. 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:38.680 There were also arbitrary and punitive rules dictating film lengths 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:41.440 and what kind of movies could even be made. They 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.040 was stifling, as you can imagine, so filmmakers started looking 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.960 for a way out, and around nineteen fifteen they found 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.480 it three thousand miles away in California, which was the 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.680 ideal location for movie making. The weather was perfect for 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.800 filming year round, the landscape was diverse, land was cheap, 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:02.160 and there was plenty of labor to help build the 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:05.520 new industry in a new place, far from the miserly 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:09.840 grasp of Thomas Edison. And what's more, California's court system 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.680 often sited with small independent outfits over large companies when 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.840 it came to patent disputes, and enforcing those patents from 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.640 across the country was going to be almost impossible for 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.799 Edison and his trust. The final blow to the inventor's 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:25.599 choke hold on the film industry came that same year 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.080 when the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the MPPC. 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.560 It said a patentee may simply enforce his right to 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.360 exclude infringement, but he must not use his patent as 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.039 a weapon to disable a rival contestant or to drive 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:44.320 him from the field, for he cannot justify such use. 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:49.720 In other words, Edison's reign of terror was over. Filmmakers 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.880 were now free to make the kinds of movies they wanted, 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:55.360 and now they could do it in the ideal location, 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.760 one that harkened back to a time not so long 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:06.560 before cowboys roam the range. I'm Aaron Mankee and Welcome 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:19.200 to the Wild West. In nineteen sixty two, Paramount Pictures 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.000 released the John Ford western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.480 The film stars Jimmy Stewart as an old frontier lawman 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.680 who tries to bring in a local outlaw without resorting 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:33.039 to violence. When the outlaw played by Lee Marvin, is 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:36.080 shot dead in a fight, Stuart's character believes that he 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:39.000 has done the deed, and in reality, his friend played 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.520 by John Wayne, had killed the outlaw to save the 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:45.520 law man's life. Stuart's character eventually confesses the truth to 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:49.360 an editor at his hometown newspaper, but the editor refuses 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:52.880 to print it. When asked why, the editor says, this 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.520 is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:00.000 the legend. Throughout this fourth season of Grim and Maal Present, 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.560 we have examined the beloved tropes of Western culture, back 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.440 when good men walked tall and wore ten stars on 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:10.000 their chests. But that image of the lone gunslinger protecting 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.880 his town from the criminal element is fiction, a legend. 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.240 It's the product of nostalgia for good old days that 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.280 never really existed. They were painted into our memories by 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:25.200 directors like Ford or Sergio Leone or Howard Hawks, directors 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:27.239 who didn't know it at the time, but were shaping 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.640 the way that the Wild West would be remembered for 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.520 years to come. That period feels like a glitch in 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:36.520 the timeline, both older than it really was and yet 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.000 close enough to be romanticized. According to the US Census 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.520 Bureau of eighteen ninety, the country still had a frontier 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.039 up at that time, and then suddenly it didn't. Three 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.120 years later, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:54.599 city illuminated by electricity, as well as a two hundred 0:06:54.640 --> 0:07:00.000 and sixty four foot tall observation wheel, the original Ferris wheel. Meanwhile, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.560 well as the exposition pulsed with current, the American Historical 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.880 Association was conducting a meeting not too far away and 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.680 somewhere in a sweltering room, A young professor named Frederick 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:14.320 Jackson Turner stood up to speak, and I've mentioned him 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:17.720 in previous episodes this season, but let's go deeper into 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.280 his story. He was only thirty one years old at 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.560 the time, but wise beyond his years. Turner believed that 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:26.880 the frontiers of the Midwest and western United States had 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:30.000 been the catalyst for true independence for the American people. 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.000 To him, the wild West had been an outlet for 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:37.040 the violent tendencies of Westerners, and that without it, Americans 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.640 would lose the heartiness that allowed them to be self 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:44.600 reliant go getters. Turner's audience, however, was indifferent to his message, 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:47.000 likely wondering if they'd be done in time to catch 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:51.960 Buffalo Bill's last performance. Turner's frontier thesis didn't make much 0:07:51.960 --> 0:07:54.760 of a splash at first. It was lost amongst the 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:58.080 other news coming out of the exposition, but after several 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.680 years his idea finally found its way into everything from 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:06.720 American politics to high school history and literature. His theory 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:10.800 was well on its way to reshaping and rewriting American life, 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:14.360 which was exactly what he had wanted at first. By 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.320 the time his Frontier thesis had reached public consciousness, he 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.000 had already realized that he was wrong the whole time, 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.360 and as with many ideas, once it got out, there 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.200 was no putting it back. Those ideas eventually leached into 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.520 everything from dime store novels and radio shows about life 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.560 on the Range to wild West shows. Audiences flocked to 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:37.240 see Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley put on the 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:41.800 root teutonist live performances in the country, ones that romanticized 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:45.440 the frontier while making light of the Native American's plight. 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.320 Those who couldn't make it to a live show or 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.440 didn't care to read, could listen to tales of honor 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.200 and justice each week on the radio. These audio plays 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:58.719 followed the same formula as their dime novel counterparts. There 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.800 was always a hero, Julie, a man who stood as 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.600 the law in a lawless town. Maybe he was the 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.840 marshal or a sheriff or a lone ranger using his 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.280 wits and his sharpshooting skills to keep outlaws and bandits 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.640 at bay. And in the process, the Western as a 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.560 genre became the quintessential venue for a showdown between good 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:22.080 and evil, and as the entertainment industry shifted its focus 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.319 from radio to film, those showdowns got a whole lot 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:30.080 more dramatic. Early silent films weren't just vehicles for fictional gunslingers. 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:34.760 Edison's earliest shorts captured re enactments from Buffalo Bill's Wild 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.160 West Show. Viewers could catch a glimpse of Annie Oakley 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:41.480 giving a demo of her sharpshooting skills, or of a 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:45.640 Native American performing a traditional buffalo dance before John Wayne 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.600 or Gary Cooper put on their spurs. Americans got to 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.960 see a version of the Wild West that they had 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:55.480 only dreamed about. Not long after these Edison films debuted, 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.120 Edwin s Porter filmed the very first Western, The Great 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:02.240 Train Robbery. At only eleven minutes long, it told the 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.160 sordid and bloody story of a violent robbery aboard a locomotive, 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.080 and it was only the beginning too. The Great Train 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.840 Robbery led the way for an entire genre of motion 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.880 pictures that appealed to all kinds of people, but mostly 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.720 conservative Americans longing for the good old days when men 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:23.520 were men and the law was respected. At least that's 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:26.760 how they saw it. In reality, the Western was about 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.640 to become a metaphor for doing the right thing against 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:33.160 a corrupt system of oppression, a standing alone for what 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:37.120 was right when everyone else was saying that it was wrong. 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:46.320 Toward the end of the nineteen twenties, as silent films 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:50.360 evolved into talkies, the Western genre remained a mainstay of 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.240 the medium. It consistently brought comfort and peace to a 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:58.000 nation contending with the socio political strife of an economic 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.559 depression and war. As the world continued to change, Americans 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.000 turned to westerns to feed their nostalgic cravings for a 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:10.440 time that never really existed, and Hollywood was only too 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:14.800 happy to oblige. The genre was deceptively deep, allowing writers 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.360 and directors to inject their stories with agendas and messages 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.240 meant to sway the movie going public toward their causes. 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.560 An audience could find just about anything they liked, be 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:28.400 it romance, gunfights, or even horror. When we think of 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.200 Hollywood westerns, we think of their Golden Age, namely the 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.200 period from the nineteen fifties through the mid nineteen seventies. 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.160 This is when actors such as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.480 and Clint Eastwood donned their stets and hats and six 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:44.839 shooters to protect small one horse towns. The wild West 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.800 of these Golden Age films, though, was truly a frontier 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:51.319 for freedom for white Americans. They embodied the promise of 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.199 manifest destiny, but only on the surface. Behind the scenes, 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:58.120 that appearance of freedom came at a great cost, thanks 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.080 to the Hayes Code. The Hayes Code was a set 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.720 of rules that Hollywood imposed on itself to appease powerful 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:08.679 religious organizations who believe the movie industry was nothing but 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.679 a den of sin. Before the Code, filmmakers depicted sex 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:15.680 and violence on film without much regard for who might 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:21.760 be watching. After nineteen thirty six, offensive language, sex, adultery, sacrilege, 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:26.000 and extreme violence were outlawed. Thanks to the code's strict governance. 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.280 Of course, some films managed to slip through the cracks 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.480 with content that otherwise would not have been approved, and 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.040 the Code itself was updated over time, but for two decades, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:38.439 if a director wanted to get his movie seen by 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.360 American audiences, it had to get the green light from 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:46.120 the Hayes Office. Over time, Hollywood's self censorship became less 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.680 of a priority. Don't get me wrong, the Hayes Code 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.080 was still being enforced well into the nineteen sixties. But 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.000 there was another threat waiting in the wings, one that, 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.959 according to the United States Government, was even more sinister 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:00.720 than a pistol full of blanks and role of thirty 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:06.120 five millimeter film communism. America's opposition to communism began during 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:09.160 the nineteen thirties, but took off in earnest following World 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:12.560 War II. The Soviet Union had been our allies during 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.600 the war, but things changed when all the nations returned 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.520 to their respective corners of the world. A task force 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.760 was formed called the House on American Activities Committee or HUAC. 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.839 It was charged with flushing out communists and communist sympathizers 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.320 from all facets of American life, including the government itself 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.880 and Hollywood. Now, the House on American Activities Committee couldn't 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.360 punish anyone for being a communist. Thanks to the First Amendment, 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:42.319 but they could hold individuals in contempt for refusing to testify, 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:45.360 and people who invoked their Fifth Amendment right to avoid 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.760 self incrimination or who did not hand over the names 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.800 of other alleged communists were blacklisted by their employers. And 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.320 perhaps no one is more remembered for such a thing 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.680 than the Hollywood Ten, a group of ten screenwriters who 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.600 refused to testify before the House on American Activities Committee 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.199 and then name names because they held firmed their principles. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.040 The Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress and 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.839 spent a whole year in prison, but things didn't get 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.160 any better once they were released. Some of the men 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.840 left the industry entirely, while others continued to write under 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.400 fake names. For example, one guy named Dalton Trumbo wrote 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:24.280 the nineteen fifty sixth film The Brave One under the 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:28.520 pseudonym Robert Rich. So how did one screenwriter find himself 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.520 in the crosshairs of the House on American Activities Committee 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.760 during the Red Scare, especially when he was writing one 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:38.600 of the greatest American Western films of all time. After all, 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:42.240 it featured an honorable law man standing alone against evil, 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:46.760 an ideal example of the genre spirit. Well, not everyone 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:50.920 thought so, especially one conservative actor known for his portrayal 0:14:51.160 --> 0:15:02.240 of macho cowboys and for his questionable beliefs. Carl Foreman 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.080 had written a number of films before nineteen fifty one, 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:09.360 including war pictures, noirs, and literary adaptations. He was a 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.960 skilled screenwriter who knew how to tell a good story, 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.320 and one year after the end of World War Two 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.440 he decided to tell a new kind. He drafted a 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.840 four page outline of a revisionist western about a loan 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.440 sheriff standing up against a band of outlaws. Now, for 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.160 those that don't know, revisionist westerns sort of tossed aside 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.840 the American individualism and ideals of the older films within 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.080 the genre, choosing instead to bring light to the corruption 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:38.880 and moral ambiguity of the bygone era. Foreman had a 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.840 solid narrative in his back pocket, but by nineteen forty 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:44.080 seven it became clear that it was very similar to 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.960 another story, a work of short fiction published in Colliers 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:52.880 by John Cunningham titled The Tin Star. So Foreman bought 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.000 the rights to the story and got to work on 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.640 a screenplay, pulling from both his outline and Cunningham's piece. 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:01.440 It was called High Noon, and it was about more 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.880 than just good versus evil. This was an allegory about 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:09.160 global unification against tyranny. It was a statement in support 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:13.160 of democracy. Now we don't need to understand the intricacies here, 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.520 but just know this. Such a plot would have been 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:19.600 plenty popular during the war, but after rampant anti Communist 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:22.920 attitudes took hold in the late forties, things had changed. 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:25.560 Foreman was at the top of his game in nineteen 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.640 fifty one, and he continued to plug away at the script. 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:31.640 He was working for a well regarded production company. He'd 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.520 been nominated twice for Best Screenplay, and he had just 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:38.080 moved into a Brentwood college once owned by Orson Wells 0:16:38.360 --> 0:16:42.920 and Rita Hayworth. And then it happened. Foreman opened his 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:46.200 mailbox to a letter printed on pink paper. It had 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:49.440 come from Washington. He had been summoned to testify before 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:53.720 the House on American Activities Committee. Now Foreman had two options. 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.160 He could fully cooperate with their investigation and give up 0:16:57.200 --> 0:16:59.840 the names of any supposed Communists that he might know, 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.080 or he could lie, hide and try to muddle the 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.720 truth as much as possible. Unfortunately, the proof was already there. 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.880 Carl Foreman had been a member of the American Communist 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.280 Party from the years nineteen thirty eight until nineteen forty two, 0:17:13.840 --> 0:17:16.280 and he hadn't been the only one. A number of 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.359 Hollywood writers and actors had joined the party around that time, 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.560 but Foreman left after he enlisted to serve in World 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.159 War Two. Now he had to choose between being a 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.400 rat or killing his career, and neither option was ideal. 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.760 Luckily for him, he didn't have to appear right away. 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.119 His appointment with Congress wouldn't be for another few months, 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.159 so he continued to work on High Noon, and the 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.480 more he considered the story, the more he thought of 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:45.320 his immigrant family, of his socialist mother, of the Great Depression, 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.080 and how it had ended their business and wiped out 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:52.040 their fortunes. They had swung hard left politically because of 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.399 the crash, and Foreman was no different. He knew that 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.440 the Blacklist was going to devastate Hollywood and the country 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:00.840 as a whole. So he came to a decision, one 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:03.439 that would change his life and the landscape of the 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.520 western genre in Hollywood Forever. He tweaked the plot of 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:12.520 High Noon to reflect the current American political climate. His protagonist, 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.479 a Marshal named Will Caine, would represent Foreman himself, a 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.199 solitary force of good going up against the bandits of 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:24.000 the House on American Activities Committee. The townspeople that Caine 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.240 failed to recruit to help him take on the outsider 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.440 threat were now Foreman's fellow screenwriters and other professionals who 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.280 stood idly by as the government brought its boot down 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.000 on him. But Carl Foreman had a supporter who also 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:40.879 felt the pressure of Washington's anti Communist committee. His name 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:44.320 was Stanley Kramer. Kramer was the producer of the film 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.679 and Foreman's friend. He had signed a five year, thirty 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:50.679 film deal with Columbia Pictures, which had been a major 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:54.399 milestone for his fledgling company. But Foreman now had a 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.720 major target on his back, and every day he continued 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.600 to work on the project that Bullseye White a little 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:04.480 more to include Kramer himself. But just like Carl Foreman, 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.600 Stanley Kramer had a choice to make. He could stay 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:10.840 true to his friend and risk his production company, or 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.080 cut Foreman loose and destroy the man's career. It didn't 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.080 help that Karl had never written a Western before and 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:21.040 the Pictures director Fred Zeinerman had never directed one. But 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:23.840 this wasn't a shoot him up like the westerns of old. 0:19:24.080 --> 0:19:27.239 This was a character driven story with sharp dialogue and 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.639 tightly wound suspense, the latter of which was emphasized by 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:34.400 the frequent appearance of ticking clocks throughout the film, each 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.120 of them counting down to the twelve pm mark, when 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.560 the protagonist's enemy was scheduled to finally make his appearance. 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.200 To play the Harry Marshall will Kine Kramer hired Gary Cooper. 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.040 Cooper had been a big star in the years prior, 0:19:48.280 --> 0:19:51.000 but hadn't been doing so well career wise for some time, 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:54.480 and saw great potential in High Noon script. His love 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.520 interest was played by an up and comer that you 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.080 may or may not have heard of, Grace Kelly, the 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.119 future Princess of Monaco. While the producer secured the cast 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:06.119 and prepared the shoot, Carl Foreman's date with the House 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:10.040 on American Activities Committee began to draw closer. Gary Cooper 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:12.520 wound up befriending Carl over the course of their working 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.359 together on the film, and even volunteered to speak before 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.919 the committee on his behalf but Foreman's lawyers refused to 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:23.080 allow it. Finally, Stanley Kramer had had enough. Washington had 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:25.280 been breathing down his neck for some time, so he 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:28.760 confronted Carl Foreman with two demands. First, he needed to 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.680 resign from High Noon, and second, he had to sell 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.119 off his stock options in the picture. Foreman refused, though, 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:38.439 which led to Kramer firing him anyway. But there was 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.440 just one problem. Foreman hadn't signed a contract deferring his salary. 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.800 This meant that the bank providing the film's financing could 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.480 cut off access at any time, bringing production to a halt. 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.359 Kramer's hand was forced. He re hired Foreman as writer 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:58.479 and associate producer, but their friendship would never recover. On 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.040 September twenty fourth of nineteen fifty one, Foreman's judgment day 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.120 had finally arrived. He drove himself to the Los Angeles 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:07.720 Federal Building for his hearing with the House on American 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.399 Activities Committee. They asked him if he was a member 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.600 of the Communist Party, which he answered truthfully. He was 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.560 not currently a member of the party, as evidenced by 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:19.360 the loyalty oath that he had just signed, but when 0:21:19.400 --> 0:21:21.280 he was asked if he had ever been a member 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:24.720 prior to nineteen fifty, Foreman pled the fifth. He also 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:27.080 wouldn't give up the names of any other Communists that 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.439 he knew. His testimony led to disastrous consequences for his career, 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.680 with stakeholders and company directors of High Noon legally removing 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:39.520 all traces of him from the picture. Foreman also accepted 0:21:39.520 --> 0:21:42.960 one hundred fifty thousand dollars in exchange for his associate 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:45.879 producer credit. Some felt that he should have held firm, 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:48.879 but he needed the money. It didn't matter that he 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:51.320 was one of the best screenwriters Hollywood had to offer. 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.760 He was officially blacklisted, and now he was out of 0:21:55.760 --> 0:22:03.760 a job. Of course, Carl Foreman was not the only 0:22:03.880 --> 0:22:07.240 victim of the House on American Activities Committee. Around five 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.720 hundred members of the motion picture industry found themselves out 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:13.800 of work for a decade or more. Some took their 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.840 lives through suicide as a result, while others died from 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:20.480 the stress. Studios also stopped pouring money into films that 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.760 they felt had a political agenda. They simply didn't want 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.760 to deal with the headaches from Washington, leaving movies like 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.480 High Noon a rarity, but Stanley Kramer eventually saw the 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.119 lights after his partnership with Columbia dissolved. He went on 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:36.720 to make nineteen fifty eight s The Defiant Ones with 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:40.600 blacklisted screenwriter Nedrick Young, and when Young won the Academy 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:44.359 Award for Best Screenplay alongside his co writer Harold Jacob Smith, 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.800 his identity remained public. Foreman, on the other hand, had 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.280 to flee the United States and ended up in London. 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:53.720 He went on to write Bridge on the River Qui 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:57.720 in Secret along with his fellow blacklisted writer Michael Wilson. 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.920 That film won the Oscar for Best Quarsplay as well, 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.200 but Foreman didn't receive credit for it until more than 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:07.560 thirty years later. And meanwhile, High Noon had been a 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:12.320 roaring success. It remained a popular Western for decades. Some, however, 0:23:12.480 --> 0:23:16.360 didn't appreciate its not so subtle message, namely John Wayne. 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:20.000 Wayne was a staunch conservative and an outspoken member of 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:23.399 an anti communist group called the Motion Picture Alliance for 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:27.720 the Preservation of American Ideals. He led conservative Hollywood in 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:31.000 a campaign against High Noon, calling it then, I quote, 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:34.320