How the West Was 'Cast
Whether you grew up watching the movies of John Wayne, cut your teeth on Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” trilogy, or consider Kevin Costner to be the screen’s quintessential cowboy star, HOW THE WEST WAS ‘CAST is just the podcast you’ve been waiting for. Join screenwriter and journalist Matthew Chernov and film historian and professor Andrew Patrick Nelson as they discuss the beloved masterpieces, forgotten treasures, and curious cult movies that make up the Western film genre. From the timeless classics of the 1940s and ‘50s, to the bold and bloody titles of the 1960s and ‘70s, to the prestige Westerns of today, HOW THE WEST WAS ‘CAST explores one of cinema’s most fascinating and enduring genres.
How the West Was 'Cast
High Noon (1952) – with Film Historian Austin Fisher
This year marks the 70th anniversary of High Noon. To celebrate that auspicious occasion, we’ve invited award-winning author, professor and cultural historian Austin Fisher on the show to talk about the film’s reputation as the quintessential Cold War-era Western. Is High Noon really an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist and the anti-communist investigations of the 1940s and ‘50s? Or has that popular reading been overstated to a large degree? We discuss that topic, and much more, on this provocative new episode.
Also, stay tuned until the very end of the show for a lively chat with the founders of Outlaw Soap, who’ve sponsored our High Noon episode.
Austin Fisher’s essay Revisiting the Blacklist Western: A Reception Study of High Noon is published by the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.
And very special thanks to songstress Sarah Vista for allowing us to use her brilliant cover version of the theme to High Noon on the podcast.
