(Ghost) Riders in the Sky
The listener can see how Tiomkin's ballad is fairly closely modeled on this scratch song in several areas, including vocal, lyric, and arrangement (compare "Yi-pi-yi-ay" and "wait along" as refrains).
"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" is a cowboy version of Hell, where the sinner is condemned to chase the Devil's herd for all eternity. The melody is adapted from the Civil War song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home":
An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day, upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way: When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw a'plowin' through the ragged skies and up a cloudy draw. Yi-pi-yi-ay, Yi-pi-yi-o, the ghost herd in the sky. Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel, their horns were black and shiny and their hot breaths he could feel. A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky, for he saw the riders comin' hard and he heard their mournful cry. "Yi-pi-yi-ay, Yi-pi-yi-o," ghost riders in the sky. Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, and shirts all soaked with sweat. They're ridin' hard to catch that herd but they ain't caught them yet 'cause They've got to ride forever in that range up in the sky on horses snortin' fire, as they ride on, hear their cry: "Yi-pi-yi-o, Yi-pi-yi-o!" Ghost riders in the sky. As the riders loped on by him, he heard one call his name, "If you want to save your soul from hell a'ridin' on our range, then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride, a-tryin' to catch the Devil's herd across these endless skies." Yi-pi-yi-ay, Yi-pi-yi-o!" Ghost riders in the sky.
This song, with lyrics by Ned Washington, won the 1952 Oscar for Best Song and started a string of title songs and ballads that may have hurt film scoring in the 1950s. For the song not only helped the movie artistically, but also commercially. Thereafter, a title song was considered an added bonus to a film's box-office in a much closer way than before. It wouldn't be difficult to fill a double CD of title songs from films of the 1950s and early 60s, including "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," "Three Coins in a Fountain," "Moon River," and countless others, many of which won Oscars. Yet during that same period, film composer Bernard Herrmann, arguably the greatest composer of film music, did not receive a single Academy nomination, though he had composed now classic scores for many science-fiction films and Hitchcock thrillers. Yet Herrmann was seemingly unable (or unwilling) to write a tune in the popular sense, which made some of his peers ignore his scores, which were nonetheless masterpieces of orchestration and composition. Hard as it may be to believe, there were no soundtrack releases of what are now considered classics of film scoring, such as The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest and Psycho. On the other hand, all of Henry Mancini's scores were released on records, to popular demand. Mancini could write tunes ("Moon River," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Charade," "Peter Gunn," "The Pink Panther," "Baby Elephant Walk"), Herrmann couldn't. Understandably, Herrmann quit the Academy saying, "I want to be judged by a jury of my peers, not my inferiors."
Malachi 4
Everything in a film "signifies," even omissions. For example, in open-form framing, what is assumed to be outside the frame is as important as what is inside.In the same way, what is omitted on the soundtrack may be as important as what is included, assuming the viewer interactively fills in what's missing. For example, in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, Tom Cruise and his girlfriend are dancing to the song, "Moon River." Before the record gets to the words, "rainbow end," the movie dissolves to a battlefield in Vietnam during the American-Vietnamese war.
It doesn't matter that the words "rainbow's end" are omitted just at this point; the listener is expected to be familiar with that song (still very popular at the time) and fill in the missing words, to ironic effect: for the dream of a "rainbow's end" turns out to be war.
In the same way, in High Noon, the parson preaches from Malachi, the final book of the Christian Old Testament. That book ends on a curse: "or else I will come and strike the land with a curse."
This curse is not spoken in the movie. But Christians might likely know the rest of the final chapter that the parson quotes from, especially since the curse, for Christians, looks forward to the hope of Jesus in the New Testament (one of the reasons the book was arranged last in the Christian Bible [the Jewish Bible ends on 2 Chronicles, with a message of hope!]).
In High Noon, of course, the land ends with a curse. This would have been more clear in the original script, where the final shots dissolve to show the town as a ghost town, after Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has left.
But let's study the quoted text more carefully, which the parson speaks as Will Kane enters the church. The text is from Malachi, chapter 1, verse 1:
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
Here we have double irony. The first part of the quote seemingly refers to Will Kane (the point is made that he is not a churchgoer). But on second viewing of the film, it's the last part that is most ironically prophetic of the town's future fate after Kane abandons them: "and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."
In these words, the scriptwriter achieves a goal otherwise planned for the actual film: to show Hadleyville as a ghost town; or, in Eliot's famous phrase, a spiritual "waste land," because without moral values. (Probably also for this reason, "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was used as scratch music to begin with.)
But can we carry this kind of reading further? It is well known that in the Bible God is often figured as a lover, while the people are his beloved (this is especially clear in The Song of Songs as well as prophets such as Jeremiah).
The title song of High Noon includes the words, "oh my darling": the singer's lover. The singer tells of a "promise when we met." The word "promise" is also a biblical word (as in the Promised Land). It is God's promise, based on a mutual vow or covenant (agreement, which is what the social contract is).
In other words, the ballad could just as easily refer to the "vow" or "covenant" (contract, agreement) that a marshal makes with the townsfolk; in forsaking that vow, the townsfolk are leaving themselves open to punishment no less than if they had forsaken their agreeement with God, whom, after all, the marshal (in a lawful society) represents.
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