High Noon High Noon High Noon is a 1952 American Western film produced by Stanley Kramer from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, directed by Fred Zinnemann, and starring Gary Cooper. The plot, depicted in real time, centers around a town marshal who is torn between his sense of duty and love for his new bride and who must face a gang of killers alone. Though mired in controversy with political overtones at the time of its release, the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four (Actor, Editing, Music-Score, and Music-Song) as well as four Golden Globe Awards (Actor, Supporting
Fred Zinnemann studios and when a handshake was a handshake no longer." However, Universal then offered him the chance to direct "The Day of the Jackal" (1973), based on the best-selling suspense novel by Frederick Forsyth. The film starred Edward Fox as an Englishman who is relentlessly driven to complete his mission to try to kill French president Charles de Gaulle, and Michael Lonsdale as the French detective charged with stopping him. Zinnemann was intrigued by the opportunity to direct a film in which the audience would already be able to guess the ending (the Jackal failing his mission), and was pleased