The Wild West 13: Hollywood

with over the past couple of years, fear not. There are other shows of mine that you can jump right into. Cabinet of Curiosities is still going strong, over one hundred twenty million downloads into its journey, and of course, my dark history podcast Lore is quickly approaching its ninth anniversary with close to three hundred episodes that are guaranteed to leave you feeling a few chills down your spine. There

are others too. Back in August, the Grim and Mile team and I launched a brand new weekly show called That's Just Weird, covering weird news from the past and present, along with one big weird news story EA and our brand new show called Harlots, which explores the intersection of sex and power throughout history, is wrapping up its first season in just a few weeks. Here and all of those shows, Lore, Cabinet of Curiosities, That's Just Weird, and

Harlots are all available everywhere you get your podcasts. You can learn more about all of those shows and so many others from our past over at Grimandmild dot com, and now on with the show. To American settlers, the West was a land of opportunity. Its soil was rich with nutrients for growing all kinds of crops. Its hills and mountains were teeming with fortune just one heave of

the pickaxe away. But even after the gold Rush had ended and East Coast transplants moved back home with their sifting pans between their legs, California still had more to offer. In nineteen fifteen, a whole new group of people set out west to seek their fortune and their freedom. Thanks to one man, Thomas Edison, filmmakers had gotten their start in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which was right across the

Hudson River from New York. The land was cheaper than it was in the city, yet still close enough for Broadway actors to take the ferry over to make movies. But New Jersey was also home to the kinescope patent holder Thomas Edison. The kinescope was the first motion picture camera invented, primarily by Edison's employee William Kennedy Dixon, but Edison held the patent, and he wielded it, along with many others, like a sword against every filmmaker on the

East Coast. In nineteen oh seven, Edison partnered with several other patent holders, like camera company Biograph and film manufacturer Easpin Kodak to create the Motion Picture Patent's Company, otherwise known as the Edison Trust. This cartel licensed its patents out to six of America's largest filmmakers so they could make their movies, but those films could not be sold

directly to distributors. All films had to be rented from the Trust, and because all aspects of the process were owned essentially by one man, that meant that Edison now had a monopoly on filmmaking, and he went after anyone caught violating his patents too. Movie houses that showed non MPPC films were technically violating the law thanks to a nineteen oh seven court case, and sometimes they found themselves

shut down by US marshals for doing so. If a filmmaker or distributor still didn't get the hint, Edison would send gangsters and hired goons to remind them about the patents. There were also arbitrary and punitive rules dictating film lengths and what kind of movies could even be made. They was stifling, as you can imagine, so filmmakers started looking for a way out, and around nineteen fifteen they found it three thousand miles away in California, which was the

ideal location for movie making. The weather was perfect for filming year round, the landscape was diverse, land was cheap, and there was plenty of labor to help build the new industry in a new place, far from the miserly grasp of Thomas Edison. And what's more, California's court system often sited with small independent outfits over large companies when it came to patent disputes, and enforcing those patents from across the country was going to be almost impossible for

Edison and his trust. The final blow to the inventor's choke hold on the film industry came that same year when the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the MPPC. It said a patentee may simply enforce his right to exclude infringement, but he must not use his patent as a weapon to disable a rival contestant or to drive him from the field, for he cannot justify such use.

In other words, Edison's reign of terror was over. Filmmakers were now free to make the kinds of movies they wanted, and now they could do it in the ideal location, one that harkened back to a time not so long before cowboys roam the range. I'm Aaron Mankee and Welcome to the Wild West. In nineteen sixty two, Paramount Pictures released the John Ford western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The film stars Jimmy Stewart as an old frontier lawman who tries to bring in a local outlaw without resorting to violence. When the outlaw played by Lee Marvin, is shot dead in a fight, Stuart's character believes that he has done the deed, and in reality, his friend played by John Wayne, had killed the outlaw to save the law man's life. Stuart's character eventually confesses the truth to an editor at his hometown newspaper, but the editor refuses

to print it. When asked why, the editor says, this is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Throughout this fourth season of Grim and Maal Present, we have examined the beloved tropes of Western culture, back when good men walked tall and wore ten stars on their chests. But that image of the lone gunslinger protecting his town from the criminal element is fiction, a legend. It's the product of nostalgia for good old days that

never really existed. They were painted into our memories by directors like Ford or Sergio Leone or Howard Hawks, directors who didn't know it at the time, but were shaping the way that the Wild West would be remembered for years to come. That period feels like a glitch in the timeline, both older than it really was and yet close enough to be romanticized. According to the US Census Bureau of eighteen ninety, the country still had a frontier

up at that time, and then suddenly it didn't. Three years later, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a city illuminated by electricity, as well as a two hundred

and sixty four foot tall observation wheel, the original Ferris wheel. Meanwhile, well as the exposition pulsed with current, the American Historical Association was conducting a meeting not too far away and somewhere in a sweltering room, A young professor named Frederick Jackson Turner stood up to speak, and I've mentioned him in previous episodes this season, but let's go deeper into his story. He was only thirty one years old at

the time, but wise beyond his years. Turner believed that the frontiers of the Midwest and western United States had been the catalyst for true independence for the American people. To him, the wild West had been an outlet for the violent tendencies of Westerners, and that without it, Americans would lose the heartiness that allowed them to be self reliant go getters. Turner's audience, however, was indifferent to his message, likely wondering if they'd be done in time to catch

Buffalo Bill's last performance. Turner's frontier thesis didn't make much of a splash at first. It was lost amongst the other news coming out of the exposition, but after several years his idea finally found its way into everything from American politics to high school history and literature. His theory was well on its way to reshaping and rewriting American life,

which was exactly what he had wanted at first. By the time his Frontier thesis had reached public consciousness, he had already realized that he was wrong the whole time, and as with many ideas, once it got out, there was no putting it back. Those ideas eventually leached into everything from dime store novels and radio shows about life

on the Range to wild West shows. Audiences flocked to see Buffalo Bill Cody and Annie Oakley put on the root teutonist live performances in the country, ones that romanticized the frontier while making light of the Native American's plight. Those who couldn't make it to a live show or didn't care to read, could listen to tales of honor and justice each week on the radio. These audio plays

followed the same formula as their dime novel counterparts. There was always a hero, Julie, a man who stood as the law in a lawless town. Maybe he was the marshal or a sheriff or a lone ranger using his wits and his sharpshooting skills to keep outlaws and bandits at bay. And in the process, the Western as a genre became the quintessential venue for a showdown between good and evil, and as the entertainment industry shifted its focus from radio to film, those showdowns got a whole lot

more dramatic. Early silent films weren't just vehicles for fictional gunslingers. Edison's earliest shorts captured re enactments from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Viewers could catch a glimpse of Annie Oakley giving a demo of her sharpshooting skills, or of a Native American performing a traditional buffalo dance before John Wayne or Gary Cooper put on their spurs. Americans got to see a version of the Wild West that they had

only dreamed about. Not long after these Edison films debuted, Edwin s Porter filmed the very first Western, The Great Train Robbery. At only eleven minutes long, it told the sordid and bloody story of a violent robbery aboard a locomotive, and it was only the beginning too. The Great Train Robbery led the way for an entire genre of motion pictures that appealed to all kinds of people, but mostly conservative Americans longing for the good old days when men

were men and the law was respected. At least that's how they saw it. In reality, the Western was about to become a metaphor for doing the right thing against a corrupt system of oppression, a standing alone for what was right when everyone else was saying that it was wrong. Toward the end of the nineteen twenties, as silent films evolved into talkies, the Western genre remained a mainstay of

the medium. It consistently brought comfort and peace to a nation contending with the socio political strife of an economic depression and war. As the world continued to change, Americans turned to westerns to feed their nostalgic cravings for a time that never really existed, and Hollywood was only too happy to oblige. The genre was deceptively deep, allowing writers and directors to inject their stories with agendas and messages meant to sway the movie going public toward their causes.

An audience could find just about anything they liked, be it romance, gunfights, or even horror. When we think of Hollywood westerns, we think of their Golden Age, namely the period from the nineteen fifties through the mid nineteen seventies. This is when actors such as John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Clint Eastwood donned their stets and hats and six shooters to protect small one horse towns. The wild West of these Golden Age films, though, was truly a frontier

for freedom for white Americans. They embodied the promise of manifest destiny, but only on the surface. Behind the scenes, that appearance of freedom came at a great cost, thanks to the Hayes Code. The Hayes Code was a set of rules that Hollywood imposed on itself to appease powerful religious organizations who believe the movie industry was nothing but a den of sin. Before the Code, filmmakers depicted sex and violence on film without much regard for who might

be watching. After nineteen thirty six, offensive language, sex, adultery, sacrilege, and extreme violence were outlawed. Thanks to the code's strict governance. Of course, some films managed to slip through the cracks with content that otherwise would not have been approved, and the Code itself was updated over time, but for two decades, if a director wanted to get his movie seen by American audiences, it had to get the green light from

the Hayes Office. Over time, Hollywood's self censorship became less of a priority. Don't get me wrong, the Hayes Code was still being enforced well into the nineteen sixties. But there was another threat waiting in the wings, one that, according to the United States Government, was even more sinister than a pistol full of blanks and role of thirty five millimeter film communism. America's opposition to communism began during the nineteen thirties, but took off in earnest following World

War II. The Soviet Union had been our allies during the war, but things changed when all the nations returned to their respective corners of the world. A task force was formed called the House on American Activities Committee or HUAC. It was charged with flushing out communists and communist sympathizers from all facets of American life, including the government itself and Hollywood. Now, the House on American Activities Committee couldn't

punish anyone for being a communist. Thanks to the First Amendment, but they could hold individuals in contempt for refusing to testify, and people who invoked their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self incrimination or who did not hand over the names

of other alleged communists were blacklisted by their employers. And perhaps no one is more remembered for such a thing than the Hollywood Ten, a group of ten screenwriters who refused to testify before the House on American Activities Committee and then name names because they held firmed their principles. The Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress and spent a whole year in prison, but things didn't get

any better once they were released. Some of the men left the industry entirely, while others continued to write under fake names. For example, one guy named Dalton Trumbo wrote the nineteen fifty sixth film The Brave One under the pseudonym Robert Rich. So how did one screenwriter find himself in the crosshairs of the House on American Activities Committee during the Red Scare, especially when he was writing one

of the greatest American Western films of all time. After all, it featured an honorable law man standing alone against evil, an ideal example of the genre spirit. Well, not everyone thought so, especially one conservative actor known for his portrayal of macho cowboys and for his questionable beliefs. Carl Foreman had written a number of films before nineteen fifty one,

including war pictures, noirs, and literary adaptations. He was a skilled screenwriter who knew how to tell a good story, and one year after the end of World War Two he decided to tell a new kind. He drafted a four page outline of a revisionist western about a loan

sheriff standing up against a band of outlaws. Now, for those that don't know, revisionist westerns sort of tossed aside the American individualism and ideals of the older films within the genre, choosing instead to bring light to the corruption and moral ambiguity of the bygone era. Foreman had a solid narrative in his back pocket, but by nineteen forty seven it became clear that it was very similar to another story, a work of short fiction published in Colliers

by John Cunningham titled The Tin Star. So Foreman bought the rights to the story and got to work on a screenplay, pulling from both his outline and Cunningham's piece. It was called High Noon, and it was about more than just good versus evil. This was an allegory about global unification against tyranny. It was a statement in support of democracy. Now we don't need to understand the intricacies here,

but just know this. Such a plot would have been plenty popular during the war, but after rampant anti Communist attitudes took hold in the late forties, things had changed. Foreman was at the top of his game in nineteen fifty one, and he continued to plug away at the script. He was working for a well regarded production company. He'd been nominated twice for Best Screenplay, and he had just moved into a Brentwood college once owned by Orson Wells

and Rita Hayworth. And then it happened. Foreman opened his mailbox to a letter printed on pink paper. It had come from Washington. He had been summoned to testify before the House on American Activities Committee. Now Foreman had two options. He could fully cooperate with their investigation and give up the names of any supposed Communists that he might know, or he could lie, hide and try to muddle the truth as much as possible. Unfortunately, the proof was already there.

Carl Foreman had been a member of the American Communist Party from the years nineteen thirty eight until nineteen forty two, and he hadn't been the only one. A number of Hollywood writers and actors had joined the party around that time, but Foreman left after he enlisted to serve in World War Two. Now he had to choose between being a rat or killing his career, and neither option was ideal. Luckily for him, he didn't have to appear right away.

His appointment with Congress wouldn't be for another few months, so he continued to work on High Noon, and the more he considered the story, the more he thought of his immigrant family, of his socialist mother, of the Great Depression, and how it had ended their business and wiped out their fortunes. They had swung hard left politically because of the crash, and Foreman was no different. He knew that the Blacklist was going to devastate Hollywood and the country

as a whole. So he came to a decision, one that would change his life and the landscape of the western genre in Hollywood Forever. He tweaked the plot of High Noon to reflect the current American political climate. His protagonist, a Marshal named Will Caine, would represent Foreman himself, a solitary force of good going up against the bandits of

the House on American Activities Committee. The townspeople that Caine failed to recruit to help him take on the outsider threat were now Foreman's fellow screenwriters and other professionals who stood idly by as the government brought its boot down on him. But Carl Foreman had a supporter who also felt the pressure of Washington's anti Communist committee. His name was Stanley Kramer. Kramer was the producer of the film

and Foreman's friend. He had signed a five year, thirty film deal with Columbia Pictures, which had been a major milestone for his fledgling company. But Foreman now had a major target on his back, and every day he continued to work on the project that Bullseye White a little more to include Kramer himself. But just like Carl Foreman, Stanley Kramer had a choice to make. He could stay true to his friend and risk his production company, or

cut Foreman loose and destroy the man's career. It didn't help that Karl had never written a Western before and the Pictures director Fred Zeinerman had never directed one. But this wasn't a shoot him up like the westerns of old.

This was a character driven story with sharp dialogue and tightly wound suspense, the latter of which was emphasized by the frequent appearance of ticking clocks throughout the film, each of them counting down to the twelve pm mark, when the protagonist's enemy was scheduled to finally make his appearance. To play the Harry Marshall will Kine Kramer hired Gary Cooper. Cooper had been a big star in the years prior, but hadn't been doing so well career wise for some time,

and saw great potential in High Noon script. His love interest was played by an up and comer that you may or may not have heard of, Grace Kelly, the future Princess of Monaco. While the producer secured the cast and prepared the shoot, Carl Foreman's date with the House

on American Activities Committee began to draw closer. Gary Cooper wound up befriending Carl over the course of their working together on the film, and even volunteered to speak before the committee on his behalf but Foreman's lawyers refused to allow it. Finally, Stanley Kramer had had enough. Washington had been breathing down his neck for some time, so he confronted Carl Foreman with two demands. First, he needed to resign from High Noon, and second, he had to sell

off his stock options in the picture. Foreman refused, though, which led to Kramer firing him anyway. But there was just one problem. Foreman hadn't signed a contract deferring his salary. This meant that the bank providing the film's financing could cut off access at any time, bringing production to a halt. Kramer's hand was forced. He re hired Foreman as writer

and associate producer, but their friendship would never recover. On September twenty fourth of nineteen fifty one, Foreman's judgment day had finally arrived. He drove himself to the Los Angeles Federal Building for his hearing with the House on American Activities Committee. They asked him if he was a member

of the Communist Party, which he answered truthfully. He was not currently a member of the party, as evidenced by the loyalty oath that he had just signed, but when he was asked if he had ever been a member prior to nineteen fifty, Foreman pled the fifth. He also wouldn't give up the names of any other Communists that he knew. His testimony led to disastrous consequences for his career, with stakeholders and company directors of High Noon legally removing

all traces of him from the picture. Foreman also accepted one hundred fifty thousand dollars in exchange for his associate producer credit. Some felt that he should have held firm, but he needed the money. It didn't matter that he was one of the best screenwriters Hollywood had to offer. He was officially blacklisted, and now he was out of a job. Of course, Carl Foreman was not the only

victim of the House on American Activities Committee. Around five hundred members of the motion picture industry found themselves out of work for a decade or more. Some took their lives through suicide as a result, while others died from the stress. Studios also stopped pouring money into films that they felt had a political agenda. They simply didn't want to deal with the headaches from Washington, leaving movies like High Noon a rarity, but Stanley Kramer eventually saw the

lights after his partnership with Columbia dissolved. He went on to make nineteen fifty eight s The Defiant Ones with blacklisted screenwriter Nedrick Young, and when Young won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay alongside his co writer Harold Jacob Smith, his identity remained public. Foreman, on the other hand, had to flee the United States and ended up in London. He went on to write Bridge on the River Qui in Secret along with his fellow blacklisted writer Michael Wilson.

That film won the Oscar for Best Quarsplay as well, but Foreman didn't receive credit for it until more than thirty years later. And meanwhile, High Noon had been a roaring success. It remained a popular Western for decades. Some, however, didn't appreciate its not so subtle message, namely John Wayne. Wayne was a staunch conservative and an outspoken member of an anti communist group called the Motion Picture Alliance for

the Preservation of American Ideals. He led conservative Hollywood in a campaign against High Noon, calling it then, I quote, the most Unamerican thing I've seen in my whole life. He'd even been offered the role of will Kine, but had turned it down because of what he considered to be the film's pro communist sentiments, although it could be argued that exercising one's First Amendment right to comment on the country's failings at the expense of freedom was probably

the most American thing someone could do. Well. Despite Wayne's vocal opposition of the film, Hi Noon went on to be nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay, but there was a problem when the winners for the Best Actor category were announced. Gary Cooper, who had played the Marshall will Kine in the film,

was overseas filming another project. Unable to accept the award himself, he asked a good friend to go on stage in his behalf, knowing that that friend would be in the audience, and so as the name Gary Cooper rang in everyone's ears, one man rose from his seat and traveled down the aisle to the stage. He took hold of the golden statue, smiled and said, I'm glad to see that they're giving this to a man who is not only most deserving, but has conducted himself throughout his years in our business

in a manner we can all be proud of. At the end of his speech, the audience applauded and the man sauntered off the stage. Oh and the name of that friend that Gary Cooper had called in to take his place? It was the film's biggest critic and opponent, fellow actor and Western legend John Wayne. I truly do hope that you've enjoyed our journey through the Wild West

over the past thirteen episodes. It's a misunderstood and misrepresented period of American history, but my team and I firmly believe that the stories we presented to you offer a more accurate and more nuanced look at what really happened. And if you enjoyed today's exploration of how Hollywood catched in on the myth of the West, then you'll want to stick around through the sponsored break. We've saved one more powerful story, and my teammates Ali Stead will tell you all about it.

Above all else, these shows leave viewers wondering, would I have been a hero with a badge on my chest? Or would I have been the outlaw clad in all black and taking what I wanted?

which allowed the new track to be laid. The plan was to have the Central Railroad Company of cal California meet the newly created Union Pacific Railroad in the middle of the country. Construction began in eighteen sixty three, with much of the labor being performed by immigrants from China and Ireland. Meanwhile, the government worked out with the railroad companies where new stations and therefore new towns would be built.

There was no rhyme or reason to it. Pins were tossed onto maps with little regard for the viability of the towns that were being proposed. Some would thrive, while others would succumb to the dangers of frontier living. Gold fever back in the eighteen forties had helped flood the West with fresh blood, but towns that sprouted overnight seemed to disappear almost as quickly when those gilded promises were washed away like grit in the river. One town named

Palisade was founded in eighteen sixty eight. It was meant to be a stop on the Central Pacific Railroad, which would bring people to and from Nevada. This included wealthy investors in the nearby silver mine. Palisade promised to become a prominent destination, with folks coming through on their way to Chicago or San Francisco. Unfortunately, few passengers really stuck

around and spent money there. It was a small town with a population of only six hundred people, and other than the silver mine, there wasn't a lot to do. Word of their guests disappointment made it back to the townsfolk, who understood what was missing the full wild West experience. You see, years earlier, pioneers had traveled out west and written to their friends and family, and even to newspapers

back east about their exciting adventures. Their readers had gotten a taste of the lawlessness and danger that was apparently prevalent in the western boom towns like Palisade. Unfortunately, when those visitors checked out, they didn't exactly get the experience they were hoping for. So the citizens of Palisade decided

to take matters into their own hands. In the early eighteen seventies, when trains pulled into Palisade Station, passengers could expect to see lawmen and outlaws having shootouts at high noon in the middle of the street. Bodies hit the floor while bank robbers made daring escapes in broad daylight. It was exactly what they read about the news articles and dime novels, and it was completely fake. The whole town was in on it, including the pistols, the bank robberies.

They'd even gotten animal blood from nearby slaughterhouses to sell the grizzly death scenes. No one missed out on the fun. Even the local Shoshoni tribe members got in on the action by performing raids on the town, really selling battles with locals and pretending to scalp them at the end. Even railroad employees were known to sneak actors onto the trains to set everyone up before they pulled into Palisade. Funnily enough, despite the town's notoriety as a den of

sin and violence, it had no sheriff. Over the course of these reenactments, more people were killed in Palisade than actually lived there, and the travelers were none to observant. They never noticed that they themselves weren't the targets of these ruthless outlaws. Over time, as the West was settled and fewer and fewer people were coming through looking for a show, Palisade and other boomtowns folded up shop. The pops of gunshots were soon replaced with the eerie sound

of wind whistling through a ghost town. A flood in nineteen ten decimated the area, and by the nineteen thirties the railroad had shut down as well. Buildings disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the land. But the name Palisade would grace American's lips a couple of more times before fading into complete obscurity. According to one legend, President Herbert Hoover was passing through in nineteen thirty two when his train was overcome by strangers armed with two dozen sticks of dynamite.

Two men reportedly scuffled with the railroad inspector before running off. One inspector claimed there hadn't even been dynamite to begin with. Finally, in two thousand and five, the heir to the town of Palisades sold it at auction for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It's not known who bought it, but according to one article, a whole lot of nothing in the middle of nowhere sold for one hundred and fifty thousand,

the most money ever paid for nothing that anyone could remember. Sadly, that's what remains of the wild West today, romantic notions of a time that never really existed. In other words, a whole lot of nothing.

To learn more about this and other shows from Grim and Mild and iHeartRadio, visit Grimandmild dot com