Gun Crazy
Encyclopedia
Gun Crazy is a 1950 film noir
feature film
starring Peggy Cummins
and John Dall
in a story about the crime-spree of a gun-toting husband and wife. The film was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and produced by Frank King and Maurice King. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo
(credited to Millard Kaufman
because of the Hollywood Blacklist
), and MacKinlay Kantor
was based upon a short story by Kantor published in 1940 in The Saturday Evening Post
. Gun Crazy was selected for the National Film Registry
, and is also known as Deadly Is the Female.(1950)
) is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns—they make him feel good inside. The drama opens with Tare, age 14, being grilled by a judge because he had been arrested for breaking and entering and stealing a gun. In flashbacks his friends say that while it's true that Tare loves guns, he would never kill anything. They tell the judge the number of times he's refused to kill animals. Nevertheless the judge sends him to reform school.
The next time we see Tare, he's grown up and back in town. He's also left military service behind. He reunites with his childhood friends and they decide to go to a carnival.
There he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins
) and goes to work at the carnival. They are attracted to one another and after upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash. Subjects of a manhunt, they are tracked by police in the hills Tare enjoyed as a boy.
; however, Kaufman was a front for Hollywood Ten outcast Dalton Trumbo
, who considerably reworked the story into a doomed love affair.
The picture was originally slated for Monogram release, yet the producers, the King Brothers Productions
, chose United Artists
as the distributor. As such, Gun Crazy enjoyed wider exposure.
In an interview with Danny Peary
, director Joseph H. Lewis revealed his instructions to actors John Dall and Peggy Cummins:
The bank heist sequence was shot entirely in one long take in Montrose, California, with no one besides the principal actors and people inside the bank alerted to the operation. This one-take shot included the sequence of driving into town to the bank, distracting and then knocking out a patrolman, and making the get-away. This was done by simulating the interior of a sedan with a stretch Cadillac with room enough to mount the camera and a jockey's saddle for the cameraman on a greased two-by-twelve board in the back. Lewis kept it fresh by having the actors improvise their dialogue.
wrote, "Joseph H. Lewis's direction is propulsive, possessed of a confident, vigorous simplicity that all the frantic editing and visual pyrotechnics of the filmmaking progeny never quite surpassed."
Sam Adams, critic for the Philadelphia City Paper
, wrote, "The codes of the time prevented Lewis from being explicit about the extent to which their fast-blooming romance is fueled by their mutual love of weaponry (Arthur Penn would rip off the covers in Bonnie and Clyde
, which owes Gun Crazy a substantial debt), but when Cummins' six-gun dangles provocatively as she gasses up their jalopy, it's clear what really fills their collective tank."
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
reported that 96% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on twenty seven reviews.
by the Library of Congress
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
American Film Institute
Lists
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
starring Peggy Cummins
Peggy Cummins
Peggy Cummins is a retired Irish actress. Cummins is best known for her performance in Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy , playing a trigger happy femme fatale who robs banks with her lover .-Early life:...
and John Dall
John Dall
John Dall was an American actor.Primarily a stage actor, he is best remembered today for two film roles; the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, and the trigger-happy lead in the 1950 noir Gun Crazy.He first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the...
in a story about the crime-spree of a gun-toting husband and wife. The film was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and produced by Frank King and Maurice King. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...
(credited to Millard Kaufman
Millard Kaufman
Millard Kaufman was an American screenwriter and novelist. His works include the Academy Award-nominated Bad Day at Black Rock . He was also one of the creators of Mr. Magoo.-Life:...
because of the Hollywood Blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
), and MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor
MacKinlay Kantor , born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 novels, several based on the American Civil War, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville, about the Confederate prisoner of war camp...
was based upon a short story by Kantor published in 1940 in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
. Gun Crazy was selected for the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
, and is also known as Deadly Is the Female.(1950)
Plot
Bart Tare (John DallJohn Dall
John Dall was an American actor.Primarily a stage actor, he is best remembered today for two film roles; the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, and the trigger-happy lead in the 1950 noir Gun Crazy.He first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the...
) is an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns—they make him feel good inside. The drama opens with Tare, age 14, being grilled by a judge because he had been arrested for breaking and entering and stealing a gun. In flashbacks his friends say that while it's true that Tare loves guns, he would never kill anything. They tell the judge the number of times he's refused to kill animals. Nevertheless the judge sends him to reform school.
The next time we see Tare, he's grown up and back in town. He's also left military service behind. He reunites with his childhood friends and they decide to go to a carnival.
There he meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins
Peggy Cummins
Peggy Cummins is a retired Irish actress. Cummins is best known for her performance in Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy , playing a trigger happy femme fatale who robs banks with her lover .-Early life:...
) and goes to work at the carnival. They are attracted to one another and after upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, on Starr's behest, they embark on a crime spree for cash. Subjects of a manhunt, they are tracked by police in the hills Tare enjoyed as a boy.
Cast
- Peggy CumminsPeggy CumminsPeggy Cummins is a retired Irish actress. Cummins is best known for her performance in Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy , playing a trigger happy femme fatale who robs banks with her lover .-Early life:...
as Annie Laurie Starr - John DallJohn DallJohn Dall was an American actor.Primarily a stage actor, he is best remembered today for two film roles; the cool-minded intellectual killer in Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope, and the trigger-happy lead in the 1950 noir Gun Crazy.He first came to fame as the young prodigy who comes alive under the...
as Bart Tare - Berry KroegerBerry KroegerBerry Kroeger was an American film, television, and stage actor.Born in San Antonio, Texas, Kroeger got his acting start on radio as an announcer and actor, playing for a time The Falcon and The Shadow...
as Packett - Morris CarnovskyMorris CarnovskyMorris Carnovsky was an American stage and film actor born in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked briefly in the Yiddish theatre before attending Washington University in St. Louis...
as Judge Willoughby - Anabel Shaw as Ruby Tare
- Harry Lewis as Sheriff Clyde Boston
- Nedrick YoungNedrick YoungNedrick Young was a screenwriter often blacklisted during the 1950s and 1960s. He is credited with writing the screenplay for Jailhouse Rock in 1957, which starred Elvis Presley....
as Dave Allister - Russ TamblynRuss TamblynRussell Irving "Russ" Tamblyn is an American film and television actor, who is arguably best known for his performance in the 1961 movie musical West Side Story as Riff, the leader of the Jets gang....
as Bart Tare, at age 14
Production
The screenplay was credited to Kantor and Millard KaufmanMillard Kaufman
Millard Kaufman was an American screenwriter and novelist. His works include the Academy Award-nominated Bad Day at Black Rock . He was also one of the creators of Mr. Magoo.-Life:...
; however, Kaufman was a front for Hollywood Ten outcast Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...
, who considerably reworked the story into a doomed love affair.
The picture was originally slated for Monogram release, yet the producers, the King Brothers Productions
King Brothers Productions
King Brothers Productions was a film production company active from 1941 to the late 1960s. It was formed by brothers Frank, Maurice and Herman King. The three got their start in the early 1940s manufacturing film projectors then quickly moved on to making films...
, chose United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
as the distributor. As such, Gun Crazy enjoyed wider exposure.
In an interview with Danny Peary
Danny Peary
Danny Peary is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written many books on cinema and sports-related topics.-Biography:...
, director Joseph H. Lewis revealed his instructions to actors John Dall and Peggy Cummins:
- I told John, "Your cock's never been so hard," and I told Peggy, "You're a female dog in heat, and you want him. But don't let him have it in a hurry. Keep him waiting." That's exactly how I talked to them and I turned them loose. I didn't have to give them more directions.
The bank heist sequence was shot entirely in one long take in Montrose, California, with no one besides the principal actors and people inside the bank alerted to the operation. This one-take shot included the sequence of driving into town to the bank, distracting and then knocking out a patrolman, and making the get-away. This was done by simulating the interior of a sedan with a stretch Cadillac with room enough to mount the camera and a jockey's saddle for the cameraman on a greased two-by-twelve board in the back. Lewis kept it fresh by having the actors improvise their dialogue.
Critical response
Critic and author Eddie MullerEddie Muller
Eddie Muller is a writer based in San Francisco. He is known for writing books about movies, particularly film noir. Founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, he is considered a noir expert and is called on to write and talk about the film genre, notably on wry commentary tracks for Fox's...
wrote, "Joseph H. Lewis's direction is propulsive, possessed of a confident, vigorous simplicity that all the frantic editing and visual pyrotechnics of the filmmaking progeny never quite surpassed."
Sam Adams, critic for the Philadelphia City Paper
Philadelphia City Paper
Philadelphia City Paper is a free alternative news weekly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was established in November 1981 as a spin-off of the now defunct WXPN Express newsletter. New issues are released every Thursday....
, wrote, "The codes of the time prevented Lewis from being explicit about the extent to which their fast-blooming romance is fueled by their mutual love of weaponry (Arthur Penn would rip off the covers in Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
, which owes Gun Crazy a substantial debt), but when Cummins' six-gun dangles provocatively as she gasses up their jalopy, it's clear what really fills their collective tank."
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reported that 96% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on twenty seven reviews.
Honors
In 1998, Gun Crazy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film RegistryNational Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions - Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "We go together, Laurie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together." - Nominated
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
- Nominated Gangster Film
External links
- Gun Crazy at Film Site
- Gun Crazy at 10 Shades of Noir
- Gun Crazy title film clip at VeohVeohVeoh is an Internet television company based in San Diego, California. It allows users to find and watch major studio content, independent productions and user-generated material. The company is a subsidiary of Israeli start-up Qlipso....
- Gun Crazy film clip at YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
(the bank heist scene)