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 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