Posted on 11/26/2015 10:55:47 AM PST by EveningStar
Elmo Williams, the celebrated Hollywood film editor who won an Academy Award for his clockwork, minute-by-minute efforts on the classic 1952 Gary Cooper Western High Noon, has died. He was 102.
Williams, who received another Oscar nom for his editing on the 1954 sci-fi film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, died peacefully Wednesday at his home in Brookings on the coast of Oregon ...
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
ping
Things I like about High Noon - great cast, good song, shot in real time. Things I hate: The townspeople of the old west were nothing like the sniveling cowards depicted in the film. Four criminals against fifty? In real life it would have been a turkey shoot. Just ask the James gang after the Northfield raid.
Howard Hawks said he made Rio Bravo in response to High Noon.
102? Cause of death?
He probably crossed the Clintons.
Condolences to family and friends of Elmo Williams. Terrific movie, High Noon.
I remember Louis L’Amour saying the same thing.
He said most of those people in town would have been veterans of the Civil war and no one would have intimidated them.
That was a good song tho.
102?
Heck of a run, Elmo. RIP!
John Wayne said this in 1971:
I also knew two other fellas who really did things that were detrimental to our way of life.
One of them was Carl Foreman, the guy who wrote the screenplay for High Noon, and
the other was Robert Rossen, the one who made the picture about Huey Long, All the
King’s Men. In Rossen’s version of All the King’s Men, which he sent me to read for a
part, every character who had any responsibility at all was guilty of some offense against
society. To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great; but, according to this
picture, everybody was a shit except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to
find a place in the world. I sent the script back to Charlie Feldman, my agent, and said,
“If you ever send me a script like this again, I’ll fire you.” Ironically, it won the Academy Award.
High Noon was even worse. Everybody says High Noon is a great picture because
Tiomkin wrote some great music for it and because Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly were
in it. So it’s got everything going for it. In that picture, four guys come in to gun down the sheriff. He goes to the church and asks for help and the guys go, “Oh well, oh gee.” And
the women stand up and say, “You’re rats. You’re rats. You’re rats.” So Cooper goes out
alone. It’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life. The last thing in
the picture is ole Coop putting the United States marshal’s badge under his foot and
stepping on it. I’ll never regret having helped run Foreman out of this country.
Yup. John Wayne hated High Noon, and he is quoted as saying that Cooper stepped on the badge at the ending. I wonder if there was a slightly different version of the ending because, clearly, Cooper does not step on the badge.
Wow! I was thinking of that. Wasn’t that a Playboy interview?
Yep! Wayne certainly thought this through...he wasn’t speaking rashly.
I grew up remembering he never stepped on it either. Cooper’s supposedly Republican upbringing probably told him not to but Clint would have agreed to film High Noon, I believe. He made his version of High Noon in High Plains Drifter where the townspeople were a bunch of gutless cowards too, which was a reason even though he helped them, he made them miserable at the same time for a reason in the end..
John Wayne didn’t like that movie either. He wrote Eastwood a letter complaining about it...
Daaaaaaaaaaaamn!
Well done, Elmo! I hope it was a good life. Rest well.
Ewwwwww! Don’t. Even.
Gorebal warming of course.
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