You know, I’ve never gotten around to seeing High Noon. I know the story, but never actually sat down to watch the movie itself.
Director Howard Hawks: “Rio Bravo” was made because I didn’t like a picture called “High Noon”. I saw “High Noon” at about the same time I saw another western picture, and we were talking about western pictures and they asked me if I liked it, and I said, “Not particularly”. I didn’t think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him. That isn’t my idea of a good western sheriff. I said that a good sheriff would turn around and say, “How good are you? Are you good enough to take the best man they’ve got?” The fellow would probably say no, and he’d say, “Well, then I’d just have to take care of you”. And that scene was in “Rio Bravo”.
I get a little sick of these New Yorkers who want me to make some psychic thing, like ‘The Left-Handed Gun.’ They don’t know anything about Western history.