BREAKING NEWS!!
Glenn has been named a 2018 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to help fund research for his new book project about the making of Midnight Cowboy and New York in the 1960s. Look for the new book in 2020, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The paperback edition of High Noon is now available:
HIGH NOON
The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
By Glenn Frankel
Order it from your nearest independent bookstore or online below.
Meanwhile, the book has annual lists on both coasts:
---The Los Angeles Times' 17 best non-fiction books of the year.
---The Washington Post's 50 notable works of non-fiction.
Click here to listen to Glenn's interview with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air"
Click here to read Glenn's newest piece,"When American Democracy Failed," in Politico Magazine
It's one of the most revered movies of Hollywood's golden age. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant movie role, High Noon achieved instant box-office and critical success. But what is often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was called to testify about his former membership in the Communist Party, facing the painful dilemma of whether to name names or sacrifice his brilliant career. As he pondered what to do, Foreman turned his screenplay into a parable about fear, repression and the cost of courage.
Glenn Frankel's new book tells the story of the making of a great American Western, set against the backdrop of a turbulent political era whose lessons resonate in our own troubled time. It can be pre-ordered below or from local book stores throughout the U.S.
PRAISE FOR HIGH NOON:
“Glenn Frankel has endowed the term ‘film historian’ with a sweeping new dimension. HIGH NOON is full of scholarly insight, compelling history, and wonderfully dishy moments, but like his previous book on THE SEARCHERS, it is also an American chronicle of real consequence. When Frankel writes about the making of a movie, he is writing about the making of a country.”
Stephen Harrigan, author of THE GATES OF THE ALAMO and A FRIEND OF MR. LINCOLN
“Glenn Frankel’s HIGH NOON isn’t just everything you always wanted to know about an enduring classic; it’s a deeply insightful portrait of the forces in postwar America and in blacklist-era Hollywood that made the film such a powerful product of such a troubled moment.”
Mark Harris, author of PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION and FIVE CAME BACK
“Glenn Frankel’s HIGH NOON is three splendid books in one: a moment-by-moment account of the making of the classic Western, a history of the Hollywood blacklist with much new material based on primary research, and, in the rise of Stanley Kramer Productions, the story of the independent producers who gradually supplanted conventional studio production. Even if we know how each story ends, it’s never less than a continuously fascinating read.”
Scott Eyman, author of JOHN WAYNE: THE LIFE AND LEGEND
