Will Kane popular imagination: the gaunt, chiseled stone face, a stoic deadpan that rendered Cooper the leading-man, romantic-actor equivalent of Buster Keaton...By contrast, Skerritt saunters through the new "Noon" as if he were still the easygoing, ironic lawman of "Picket Fences"." Will Kane William "Will" Kane is the protagonist of the film "High Noon" (1952). He was first played by Gary Cooper, then by Lee Majors in "" (1980), and by Tom Skerritt in "High Noon" (2000), a remake for cable television. Gary Cooper originated the character in "High Noon" in 1952. Cooper briefly reprised his "High Noon" role in an uncredited
High Noon and "Los Angeles Times" gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, among others. According to "Darkness at High Noon: The Carl Foreman Documents"—a 2002 documentary based in part on a lengthy 1952 letter from Foreman to film critic Bosley Crowther—Foreman's role in the creation and production of "High Noon" has been unfairly downplayed over the years in favor of Kramer's. Foreman told Crowther that the film originated from a four-page plot outline he wrote that turned out to be very similar to a short story by John W. Cunningham called "The Tin Star". Foreman purchased the film rights to Cunningham's story and wrote