Rio Bravo

Actor John Wayne and director Howard Hawks were equally disgusted by the popular 1952 western High Noon. What peeved them most was the premise that the townsfolk of a western community would desert their sheriff at a time when he needed them most--and that said sheriff would be reduced to begging for assistance. In High Noon, only a callow kid, a drunk, and an old man stick by sheriff Gary Cooper when he faces a showdown; this throwaway sequence was supposed to indicate the tremulous Cooper...