High Noon

 

CoVid has got me watching movies for the n^th time these days. 

Tonight, it was “High Noon”.  I first watched this movie, just short of 70 years ago, the spring of 1952 in Los Gatos; I was 14.

It was a coming of age experience for me.  I watched it twice, back-to-back.  I fell madly in love with Katy Jurado, [who got billing ahead of Grace Kelley see poster bottom].  She was a woman who would fight for her man, which seemed like a good test in those fifties, couple’s rules.  On the other hand, it was Grace Kelley who ran back from the train and shot one of her hubby’s foes.

I didn’t like the quip in this movie poster, “… too proud to run!”.  It wasn’t pride, at all, that I observed, but character.  He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.  It’s like going in the Army or being on the football team: you sign up and you’ve got to meet your obligations.  There’s no backing out on technicalities, or lack of support.  A man must do what a man must do – that was my 14-year-old lesson.  The movie ingrained this in me at that time, and I have followed that dictum ever since.

It’s a cultural, male burden, at least in my WASP background; I can’t speak for other cultures or societies.

It hasn’t particularly served me well.

I did not fail to note, even at 14, that older Gary Cooper had romances with both Katy Jurado, and Grace Kelly  He was a stud.