High Noon: the Presidents' Choice

The 1952 western High Noon is the favourite film of US presidents, according to a new documentary about the viewing habits of the White House occupants.

The story of Gary Cooper's sheriff confronting criminals when no one else will back him presumably has easily-imagined effects on presidential egos.

The programme, All the President's Men, says that Bill Clinton has seen the movie 20 times, that Eisenhower screened it three times at the White House and that the present incumbent has also had it shown there.

The documentary, which is being shown on US cable channel Bravo, centres around the revelations of former White House projectionist Paul Fisher, who manned the reels at Pennsylvania Avenue from 1953 to1986.

One of the documentary's producers, Burt Kearns, told the LA Times that Gary Cooper's marshal from High Noon was "a man alone, who has to do the right thing. He's what you'd think the president would imagine himself to be."

The programme also reveals that Richard Nixon twice watched Patton - the biopic of the all-conquering US general - in the week he launched bombing raids on Cambodia in 1970; that Jimmy Carter was the most cinephilic president, screening 580 films during his time in office; and that the Bushes are given to a little Kevin Costner, in the whimsical Field of Dreams.

Bill Clinton apparently had more catholic tastes than most of his predecessors, enjoying Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom and Jane Campion's The Piano - though after watching the latter he was moved to enquire: "What was that all about?"

Whatever the lessons for presidents held in the simple morality tale of High Noon, they might like to bear in mind the verdict of John Wayne on the movie, which he turned down: "The most un-American thing I've ever seen in my whole life."