High Noon Actress, Score, and Cinematography-Black and White). The award-winning score was written by Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin. "High Noon" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 1989, the NFR's first year of existence. In Hadleyville, a small town in New Mexico Territory, Marshal Will Kane (Cooper), newly married to Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), prepares to retire. The happy couple will soon depart for a new life to raise a family and run a store in another town. However, word arrives that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald),
High Noon were making together. Fleischer says his RKO contract prevented him from directing "High Noon". John Wayne was originally offered the lead role in the film, but turned it down because he felt that Foreman's story was an obvious allegory against blacklisting, which he actively supported. Later, he told an interviewer that he would "never regret having helped run [Foreman] out of the country". Cooper was Wayne's longtime friend, and shared his conservative political views; he had been a "friendly witness" before HUAC, but did not implicate anyone as a suspected Communist, and later became a vigorous opponent of blacklisting. Ironically,