High Noon

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- About midway through Chris Paul's interview after the Clippers' Game 6 loss at Staples Center on Friday night, he asked what time Game 7 would be Sunday against the Memphis Grizzlies. Paul was told that the game starts at noon, Memphis time. "Cool," Paul said. "That way we can get in and get out. " But to go where? Will the Clippers be going home for the summer after blowing a 3-1 lead in the series that's now tied at 3-3? Or will the Clippers be heading to San Antonio to meet the Spurs on Tuesday night in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals?

It's more than 100 degrees in Oatman, Ariz ., these days, but is it hot enough to fry an egg? For the past 21 years, the tiny ghost town east of Bulhead City on historic Route 66 has been inviting visitors and locals to find out during its annual Sidewalk Egg Fry at high noon on the Fourth of July. "This year it should be a cool 108 to 110, presuming we don't get an overcast [day]" event coordinator Fred Eck said in an email. The egg-frying rules are pretty explicit about the heat source: No fires or blow torches allowed.

The Black Hats of Sonora, a civic booster club, on Saturday will lead its seventh bus tour of the spots used as sets in the filming of "High Noon," the 1952 classic that won four Oscars. The tour of Tuolumne County sites will be accompanied by Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly look-alikes costumed like the characters the two actors played in the film. The tour starts at 10 a.m. from Courthouse Park in Sonora.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- About midway through Chris Paul's interview after the Clippers' Game 6 loss at Staples Center on Friday night, he asked what time Game 7 would be Sunday against the Memphis Grizzlies. Paul was told that the game starts at noon, Memphis time. "Cool," Paul said. "That way we can get in and get out. " But to go where? Will the Clippers be going home for the summer after blowing a 3-1 lead in the series that's now tied at 3-3? Or will the Clippers be heading to San Antonio to meet the Spurs on Tuesday night in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals?

The 40th anniversary of the classic Western "High Noon" offers a unique opportunity to see how the same film can be treated in laser release by two different companies, and to see what a wealth of material is available in addition to the film itself. For $40, one company, Republic Pictures Home Video, offers a fancy box with no printed information on it, but the commemorative package includes a facsimile of the film's original "one sheet" and a lobby-card reproduction.

This happened sometime around 1975 or '76, I'm not sure. But around there. I was sitting in a Basque restaurant near the old railroad station in Fresno, listening to George Ballis complain about his life. Ballis came from the Saul Alinsky school of politics and had dedicated himself to fighting the big water boys of California. He never seemed to understand why millionaires should be getting federally subsidized water to grow crops that were sold at federally subsidized prices.

It's a showdown that's been half a century in the making, a dispute that has polarized show-biz factions into camps supporting either of a pair of principals who are no longer around to present their own versions. At stake is the coin of the realm in Hollywood--a name in the credits. Fame and fortunes come and go, but on-screen credits are forever. Or, as in the case of the 1952 film classic "High Noon," missing altogether.

"Be a Straight Shooter When One's Needed," subtitled "Sometimes, principles call for a 'High Noon,' " (Commentary, Dec. 6) is indeed right that "High Noon" is a parable for our time. But James Holmes' shallow reading of the movie gets the message completely backward, reading it as a call for us to stand by the Bush administration in its bellicose stance on the Middle East and its rush to war in Iraq. A review of "High Noon" by Brian Webster, on the Web, reminds us exactly who the cowardly friends were who abandoned Gary Cooper: The movie is "all the more meaningful when it's considered in the light of events at the time of its making, when people in the movie industry who were targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee experienced similar abandonment by their friends."

We've all read about President Clinton's Hollywood connections and his interest in movies. So it was only natural to wonder what the President thought about the movies nominated for Academy Awards on the eve of Hollywood's biggest night of the year. Yes, Clinton is planning on watching the Oscars Monday night, a White House spokesperson told The Times. The plan is to watch the show with friends. No, the President would not offer his Oscar predictions.

The Indian film "Spices" (at the Music Hall)--a simple, strong social melodrama that rivets your attention and burns your eyes--is set during recent colonial times, in a small lakeside village where fields of red chiles blaze and wave under an unremitting sun.

A life of 'Resistance' Fred Zinnemann directed 21 features. Here's a look at three that are in the Getty Research Institute retrospective: 'High Noon' Gary Cooper's lagging career was resurrected with this 1952 western-as-political-allegory for which he won the lead actor Oscar. 'The Search' Montgomery Clift was Oscar-nominated for his performance in this harrowing 1948 drama about refugee children in Europe after the war. 'Julia' Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave play lifelong friends who become involved in the anti-fascist movement in Germany in this 1977 drama.

From Newport, Wales The Ryder Cup is a study in much ado about everything. Somebody will win, somebody will lose and the world will continue on quite nicely Monday morning. Presumably, nobody will die. Nobody will declare war after the competition ends Sunday. It is only a golf tournament, a sporting event that is, essentially, what all other major sporting events are now: a big TV show. That being said, it sure is fun. The sights and sounds, the high jinks, the quest for a psychological edge, are fascinating.

Sixty years ago, Carl Reiner was a regular on Sid Caesar's legendary comedy-variety series, "Your Show of Shows," and Mel Brooks was one of the hungry young writers on the live NBC program. The pair became fast friends, and the comedy world has never been the same. The American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre is saluting these two national treasures with "A Laugh-Out-Loud Weekend With Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner." The fun starts Thursday evening with 1982's " My Favorite Year," starring Peter O'Toole as an aging matinee idol guest starring on a fictionalized version of "Your Show of Shows," and Brooks' 1981 comedy " History of the World Part I ."

After the political shenanigans of Sheriff Michael S. Carona, who left office in midterm to fight corruption charges, Orange County supervisors wisely reached outside the cozy circle of the local power elite for an independent-minded law enforcement leader. That's what they got in Sandra Hutchens, a retired division chief from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

DENNIS LIM takes a cheap shot at deceased producer-director Stanley Kramer in his review of the new Sony film collection of Kramer's work ["A Guest Who Just Won't Go Away," Feb. 10]. Lim declares "many of" Kramer's films "suffered from a stiffness and simple-mindedness that was antithetical to convincing drama" -- this about a film library that includes "Champion," "The Men," "The Caine Mutiny" and "High Noon." Lim lauds the dreadful " . . . Mad World" which obscured the comic talents of no less than Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar and Dick Shawn to name a few; only Buster Keaton managing a hilarious 30-second silent vignette.

Bill Hunt looks like the cat that swallowed the Carona. We're talking Friday morning outside a Laguna Hills coffee shop, but Hunt's thoughts are on this Wednesday, a day that might change his life. He will admit to no overconfidence. He will make no predictions. But he looks like somebody who knows something. Or, at least, who has a cop's hunch. Like, perhaps his plan to unseat his boss, two-term Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona, is about to get a big boost. On Wednesday, the Assn.

High Noon comes to Loyola Marymount at 7:30 tonight when this town won't be big enough for both Loyola and St. Mary's. There aren't really bad guys in this plot, because it's more a conflict of philosophies than right vs. wrong. Would Gary Cooper be Paul Westhead, the erudite ringleader of the hell-bent-for-leather Loyola scoring machine, or would he be St. Mary's Lynn Nance, a ruddy Texan who favors Alamo-style defense?

Do not forsake me, oh my darlin'. Easy to say in the Tex Ritter ballad woven through the original movie. By the end of Sunday's TBS remake of the classic 1952 western "High Noon," however, you definitely have that forsaken feeling. Not that any film or story is off limits to fresh eyes. If Shakespeare can be redefined infinite ways, what's so hoity-toity about "High Noon"? Yet when a clock in Hadleyville reads 11:45 a.m.

Like vast armies taking up positions on the eve of battle, interest groups on the right and left are readying for a fight over President Bush's nomination of a successor to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Both sides agree that the battle is likely to be fierce. The stakes are high: O'Connor has been one of the court's swing voters whose views determine how cases are decided.

While the nation's political attention focuses on the charges, countercharges, shifting deadlocks and promiscuous polls of the presidential horse race, several Senate races in the West form a little-noticed undercurrent that could affect government nearly as much as the top of the ballot.