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Gun Crazy

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Gun Crazy
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJoseph H. Lewis
Screenplay byDalton Trumbo
MacKinlay Kantor
Based on"Gun Crazy"
1940 story in The Saturday Evening Post
by MacKinlay Kantor
Produced byFrank King
Maurice King
StarringPeggy Cummins
John Dall
CinematographyRussell Harlan
Edited byHarry Gerstad
Music byVictor Young
Production
company
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • January 20, 1950 (1950-01-20) (United States)
Running time
87 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$400,000 (1949)

Gun Crazy (also known as Deadly Is the Female)[1] is a 1950 American crime film noir starring Peggy Cummins and John Dall in a story about the crime-spree of a gun-toting husband and wife.[2] It was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, and produced by Frank and Maurice King.

The screenplay by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (credited to Millard Kaufman because of the blacklist) and MacKinlay Kantor was based upon a short story by Kantor published in 1940 in The Saturday Evening Post.[3] In 1998, Gun Crazy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[4][5]

Plot

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Teenager Barton "Bart" Tare gets caught breaking a hardware store window to steal a gun. He is sent to reform school for four years despite the supportive testimony of his friends Dave and Clyde, his older sister Ruby and others. They claim he would never kill any living creature, even though he has had a fascination with guns even as a child. Flashbacks provide a portrait of Bart who, after killing a young chick with a BB gun at age seven, is hesitant to shoot at anything, even a mountain lion with a bounty on its head. However, he is a dead shot with a handgun.

After reform school and a stint in the Army teaching marksmanship, Bart returns home. He, Dave, and Clyde go to a traveling carnival in town. Once there, Bart challenges sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr ("Laurie") to a contest and wins. She gets him a job with the carnival and he becomes smitten with her. Their mutual attraction inflames the jealousy of their boss, Packett, who wants her for himself. When Packett tries to force himself on her, Bart fires a warning shot within an inch of his nose. Packet fires the couple, who leave together. Before they marry, Laurie warns Bart that she is "bad, but will try to be good". They embark on a carefree honeymoon on Bart's savings. When the money runs out, she gives Bart a stark choice: she wants to obtain the good things in life, so he must join her in a career of crime or she will leave him. They hold up stores and gas stations, but the paltry take does not last long.

While fleeing a police car Laurie tells Bart to shoot at the driver so they can escape, but he hesitates and becomes disoriented. Ultimately, he shoots the tire out and the car crashes. Later that day, at another robbery, Laurie intends to shoot and kill a grocer, but Bart stops her in time. The couple have now been identified in national newspapers as notorious robbers.

Bart says he is done with a life of crime. Laurie persuades him to take on one last big robbery so they can flee the country and live in peace and comfort. They get jobs at a meat processing plant and make detailed plans. When they hold up the payroll department, the office manager pulls the burglar alarm and Laurie shoots her dead. While fleeing the plant, Laurie also kills a security guard. Bart does not realize at the time that both victims are dead, but learns about it later from a newspaper. Laurie then discloses she shot a man dead in St. Louis while she and Packett were attempting a hold-up. She claims that these murders happened because her fear makes her unable to think straight in the moment.

To minimize the chances of being caught, the two decide to split up for a couple of months, but neither can bear to be away from the other. The FBI is brought in, and the fugitives become the targets of an intense manhunt.

In California, Bart arranges for passage to Mexico, when the FBI finds them in a dance hall. Forced to run, they leave all their loot behind. With roadblocks everywhere, they jump on a train and get off near Ruby's house. Clyde, then the local sheriff, notices that the house has the curtains drawn and the children are not in school. He informs Dave, and the two plead with Bart to give himself and Laurie up. Instead, the couple flee into the mountains. Pursued by police dogs, they are surrounded in reed grass the next morning. In dense fog, Dave and Clyde approach to try to reason with them. As soon as Bart sees Laurie preparing to gun them down, he shoots her and is, in turn, killed by the police.

Cast

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Production

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The screenplay was credited to Kantor and Millard Kaufman; however, Kaufman was a front for Hollywood Ten outcast Dalton Trumbo, who considerably reworked the story into a doomed love affair.

The film was budgeted at $400,000, and principal photography took 30 days.[6]

The picture originally was slated to be released by Monogram Studios. However, King Brothers Productions, the producers, chose United Artists as the distributor. Gun Crazy enjoyed wider exposure because it was a United Artists release.[7]

The King Brothers originally announced they wanted Veronica Lake for the lead.[8]

In an interview with Danny Peary, 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.[9]

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.[9] This one-take shot includes 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 the onscreen conversations fresh by having the actors improvise their dialogue.

Reception

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Alternate theatrical release poster

Critical response

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The New York Times wrote: “Even with some adroit camouflaging, the Palace’s new picture...is pretty cheap stuff. ‘Gun Crazy’ just about covers it....this spurious concoction is basically on par with the most humdrum pulp fiction....In all fairness to Mr. Kantor’s idea, the actual script, which he wrote with Millard Kuafman, is a fairly literature business. Even if the young desperadoes aren’t motivated, apparently beyond Miss Cummins’ grim appreciation of money and her partner’s general restlessness, neither are they sentimentalized or offered as luckless tools of society. The dialogue is quite good and the photography is first-rate....The main drawbacks are the stars themselves, who look more like fugitives from a 4-H Club than from the law. Just why two such clean-cut youngsters...should be so cast is something for the Sphinx, but they certainly give it the works. Looking as fragile as a Dresden doll, Miss Cummins bites into her assignment like a shark. Mr. Dall’s pluck is just as admirable, even when he’s nervously begging his soulmate to make their next robbery ‘the lahst one’....we must say that it takes more than crime and the King Brothers to make sows’ ears out of silk purses.”[10]

In his 1998 book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, critic and film historian Eddie Muller commends the production. "Joseph H. Lewis's direction", he notes, "is propulsive, possessed of a confident, vigorous simplicity that all the frantic editing and visual pyrotechnics of the filmmaking progeny never quite surpassed."[11]

Sam Adams, media critic for the Philadelphia City Paper, wrote in 2008: "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."[12]

The review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 91% of film critics gave the production a positive rating, one based on 64 reviews.[13]

Recognition

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In 1998, Gun Crazy was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

References

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  1. ^ Gun Crazy at the TCM Movie Database.
  2. ^ Gun Crazy at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films.
  3. ^ A.H. WEILER (Oct 27, 1946). "BY WAY OF REPORT: Previewing a Theatre and Other Film Matters Love Seats Busy Kantor Glamour's Power". New York Times. p. 67.
  4. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
  5. ^ "Hooray for Hollywood (December 1998) – Library of Congress Information Bulletin". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
  6. ^ Van Gelder, Lawrence (September 13, 2000). "Joseph H. Lewis, 93, Director Who Turned B-Movies Into Art". The New York Times. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
  7. ^ Erikson, Hal. Gun Crazy at AllMovie.
  8. ^ "STUDIO BRIEFS". Los Angeles Times. Apr 11, 1949. p. B7.
  9. ^ a b Peary, Danny. Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful, Delta Books, 1981. pp. 120-121 ISBN 0-517-20185-2.
  10. ^ H.H.T. “The Screen: Episodic and Familiar.” NewYork Times, 25 August 1950, 17.
  11. ^ Muller, Eddie. Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir, St. Martin's Griffin, 208 pages, 1998.
  12. ^ Adams, Sam Archived 2008-05-22 at the Wayback Machine. Philadelphia City Paper, film review, July 29-August 4, 2004. Accessed: August 1, 2013.
  13. ^ Gun Crazy at Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed: September 14, 2021.
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