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 that they considered it an underrated achievement. Zinnemann blamed the film's critical and commercial failure for his retirement from filmmaking: "I'm not saying it was a good picture. But there was a degree of viciousness in the reviews. The pleasure some people took in tearing down the film really hurt." Zinnemann is often regarded as striking a blow against "ageism" in Hollywood. The apocryphal story goes that, in the 1980s, during a meeting with a young Hollywood executive, Zinnemann was surprised to find the executive didn't know who he was, despite having won four Academy Awards, and directing many of