By David in TN
friday, march 14, 2025 at 11:38:00 p.m. edt
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight and 10 a.m. ET is Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy (1950), with Peggy Cummins, John Dall, Berry Kroeger, Anabel Shaw and Morris Carnovsky.
Gun Crazy was on Noir Alley in 2017, nearly eight years ago. Film Noir Guide closed with "A strange and, at times, beautiful film, Gun Crazy is director Lewis' masterpiece. Like his later hit The Big Combo, this cult classic oozes with sex and violence (1950s style, of course) and is the film that its two young stars are most remembered for."
N.S.: “Wagon Wheel Joe” Lewis (1907-2000) switched from B or even C Western movies so obscure (for $250 a pop, at his peak!), I've hardly heard of any of them, to Western shows early in the TV era, and directed 51 episodes of the Sam Peckinpah-created show, The Rilfleman (1958-1963), which starred Chuck Connors.
“His nickname was ‘Wagon Wheel Joe,’ a name he received early in his career when he was shooting B Westerns for Universal. He had a penchant for framing shots through the spokes of the nearest wagon wheel, to break up the visual monotony of a scene. Several of the editors at Universal complained to the studio brass that they had a hard time cutting Lewis’ films because ‘he keeps putting these damn wagon wheels in front of everything.’ Director Oliver Drake, a friend of Lewis’ and also his boss on those Westerns, jokingly referred to him as ‘Wagon Wheel Joe,’ and the name stuck.”
Lewis: “I carried a box filled with different wagon wheels. Whenever I’d come to a scene which was just disgraceful in dialogue and all, I’d place a wagon wheel in one portion of the frame, and make an artistic shot out of it, so by the time the scene was over you only saw the artistic value and couldn’t analyze what the scene was about.”
4 comments:
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 cliche about nuclear war destroying civilization (a Communist-propaganda device intended to get the USA 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
Never heard of "Gun Crazy" or the stars. But if I ran into it,I'd give it a try.
--GRA
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. A short, sad life.
-RM
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, 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
Post a Comment