“Wayne… had interviewed real gunslingers from the old west days and knew that in a High Noon situation every man in town would have met the train, shotgun in hand.
That’s what a Montana friend told me. HIGH NOON was a New Yorker’s view of the Old West.
My favorite Westerns are Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER (a movie my folks called “Stampede” and which lost me family film-choosing privileges) and RIO BRAVO in which the Sheriff keeps turning down offers of help.
I also prefer TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT to CASABLANCA. (The love affair between Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden in ATLAS SHRUGGED is an explicit philosophical rebuttal to the romantic self-sacrifice of CASABLANCA) It’s all about philosophy.
And as a woman, Hawks’ women were women I admired and tried to emulate as opposed to John Ford’s prissy housewives who all wore aprons and waved goodbye to their men as they went off on adventures, very depressing.
