Gun Crazy: The back story
By RM
saturday, march 15, 2025 at 1:00:00 a.m. edt
Re: Gun Crazy-I just learned that Dalton Trumbo (reputedly) wrote this, hiding behind someone else’s name. Well, he was a damn good writer, even though he was a despicable Commie! (The talented ones are the most dangerous!)
The same year, he was (again, allegedly) one of the uncredited writers of Rocketship XM, which was made quickly to compete with George Pal’s elaborate, patriotic Destination Moon. Trumbo’s movie shows the first space mission ending in disaster, and establishes the soon-to-be-familiar cliché about nuclear war destroying civilization (a Communist-propaganda device intended to get the U.S.A. to disarm itself, and induce fear among the populace). Also a good movie, despite its subversive intent!
Getting back to Gun Crazy-in the justly famous bank robbery scene filmed entirely from inside the getaway car, the two criminals pass a cigarette back and forth-from their handling of it, it sure looks as if they’re smoking dope... Quite a moment for a film from that era. Great movie!
-RM
By RM
saturday, march 15, 2025 at 12:21:00 p.m. edt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Cummins
Considering how hot she is in Gun Crazy, most of her other roles (that I’ve seen) were fairly innocuous (including the classic Curse (Night) of the Demon.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dall
Light-in-the-loafers actor who was perfectly cast by Hitchcock as one of the Leopold-Loeb-type killers in Rope, which probably led to his role in Gun Crazy.
[And then to the weakling beneficiary of nepotism in Spartacus (1960), whose lassitude allows the slave army to get the jump on his command and utterly humiliate him.]
A short, sad life.
-RM
By RM
saturday, march 15, 2025 at 10:32:00 p.m. edt
The “front” for Trumbo on Gun Crazy was Millard Kaufman, another lefty but one who apparently escaped the blacklist. Kaufman’s biggie was the excruciating Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), in which do-gooder Spencer Tracy goes around beating up small-town “bigots,” despite the handicap of having only one arm! He even manages to lick Ernie Borgnine, who’s twice his size (or weight).
-RM
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3 comments:
Hey, this RM guy knows a lot about movies- we should have more posts from him!
-RM
(Actually, I made the above comment thinking of a letter that appeared in TV GUIDE in 1965, which read as follows-
"I just watched the BILL DANA SHOW again, and I can't believe this fine show is going off the air." Signed- Bill Dana.)
Very true,RM. But about Bill Dana--that might have been the funniest thing he ever said(and why he went off the air).
--GRA
At that time, it was probably low ratings that killed his show; later, the Mex pressure groups (Communist funded?) went after him and pretty much ended his career (along with that of the Frito Bandito). If you saw THE NUDE BOMB, which he wrote, it actually had some clever gags- but it also had a nasty edge to it (who wants to hear Maxwell Smart using 4-letter words?) that made me think Dana might be a bitter, angry guy. His brother probably ended up wealthier- he wrote the theme for GET SMART!
-RM
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