The Maltese Falcon

[Naphtali]

I viewed "The Maltese Falcon" last night. Something struck me as, not exactly odd, but supremely unusual. Miles Archer was shot with a Webley-Fosberry revolver. These are scarce, and studios would have been unlikely to have such a firearm, or to acquire one for use by a first-time director. In fact, Warner's "house" handguns were Colts. The first S&W revolver I viewed in a motion picture distributed by Warner Brothers was used by one of the assassins in "The Enforcer" (1952).

Where did Warner Brothers get the Webley-Fosberry revolver? Why? Few movie goers would know what this revolver is. And in 1941 fidelity to that sort of minutiae occurred almost never.

 

[Richard Warren]

I viewed "The Maltese Falcon" last night. Something struck me as, not exactly odd, but supremely unusual. Miles Archer was shot with a Webley-Fosberry revolver. These are scarce, and studios would have been unlikely to have such a firearm, or to acquire one for use by a first-time director. In fact, Warner's "house" handguns were Colts. The first S&W revolver I viewed in a motion picture distributed by Warner Brothers was used by one of the assassins in "The Enforcer" (1952).

Where did Warner Brothers get the Webley-Fosberry revolver? Why? Few movie goers would know what this revolver is. And in 1941 fidelity to that sort of minutiae occurred almost never.

I believe the weapon was in the company's 1939 catalogue, according to Wikipedia. In 1904 I understand one cost around 8 pounds, around $950 today if I calculate correctly (doubtful). Since by 1939 it was a commercial failure it may have been cheaper.

Huston I think said he just took the book and cut out the parts he didn't like, trying to maintain the atmospher.

Nothing to see here, move along.

 

[scotrace]

It's the specific gun named in the novel, in the same dialogue:

"It's a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. That's it. Thirty-eight, eight shot. They don't make them anymore. How many gone out of it?"

It was a key part of the plot, an unusual murder weapon. To have just swapped out an ordinary colt would have knocked a hole in it.

 

[Richard Warren]

.38 or .45?

 

[scotrace]

Novel says .38.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The studio prop department probably had one in stock. Or borrowed one from a friendly gun shop, If not they could have faked one up. Didn't Warners make war pictures or foreign legion type pictures that could have used English weapons?

 

[MikeKardec]

I think the automatic revolver was a .45 or .455 but good foreign reference was not that available in Hammett's day ... I'm not sure that "Small Arms of the World" was published at the time he wrote the novel.

Stembridge Gun Rental was a company partly owned by C.B. DeMill in the early days so I'm guessing it was formed in the silent era. They served as the general armorers to the entire film business until around 2000. A similar set up (and located next door) to Western Costume right near Paramount. Each studio had a prop department too and individual prop men also had their favorite weapons (see below).

The Stembridge warehouse was NUTS! I was in there numerous times from the 1970s to the '90s. Damn near every gun from every film could be found there and the armorers could give you a detailed history not only on the type of firearm but the films it had been in.

Studio productions tended to donate/liquidate their guns to Stembridge because their experts would be sure they were well maintained and ready for use on the next film. Also there were guns that a normal person couldn't own and in later years production companies never wanted to have any assets after a production was finished so they would make a deal with Stembridge. I remember a trashcan full of Colt sidehammer revolving rifles ... very obscure. The place was that complete when it came to firearms. Tommy guns, Gatlings, Hotchkiss along with all of the the more regular Colts and Winchesters. You could easily have outfitted a platoon of any army of any era in that place.

Individual prop men have their favorite guns because guns that fire blanks are finicky. Autos have to be modified to safely back up pressure in the mechanism. A blank has no real recoil (no bullet = no equal and opposite reaction), and thus nothing to operate the mechanism but gas pressure. Every automatic has a hex bolt threaded into it's barrel and then a hole of (hopefully) the right diameter drilled in the bolt. That allows flame through and takes some of the pressure off the action, that has to be balanced against spring pressure and the blank load, full, half or quarter load with differing amounts of black or flash powder depending on the effect. Stembridge also made blanks of all sorts. Not every gun worked in every circumstance. For a LONG time it was nearly impossible to get Colt 1911s to work and eventually gun manufacturers began going the engineering on the blank firing versions, the gun-porn that is Hollywood sold a lot of Barettas and Sigs for them!

Revolvers and other manually cycled firearms also had their quirks with cleanliness and degrees of wear being critical. These days many prop men are in love with "real" guns from the actual era ... and actors love anything "real" too. I worked with a pair of dudes who constantly forced 150 year old out of timing rusty crap on productions constantly. When they finally worked for me on a Western I told them if there was one misfire, if we lost just one take because of old guns/bad maintenance I wold make them buy reproduction guns to cover every character. First take with a firearm ... mis fire! Those guys hated me but at around $10,000/hour how can you justify a wasted minute?

Anyway, good prop guys and top armorers have their favorites because they ALWAYS work. Bad prop guys, well unfortunately, they also have the favorites that they stick you with.

 

[AdeeC]

Up until the mid 30', I read that films used real guns with real bullets. That s why in all the real old films the shooter is always pointing the gun downwards to an angle slightly away from an intended victim and aiming for a sandbag no doubt.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Sean Connery carried a Webley/Fosberry in the movie ZARDOZ (1974). In an early scene you see him cocking it by grabbing the barrel and pushing back.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Up until the mid 30', I read that films used real guns with real bullets. That s why in all the real old films the shooter is always pointing the gun downwards to an angle slightly away from an intended victim and aiming for a sandbag no doubt.

I believe blanks were always used in the film industry. The reason for the guns being pointed off to one side was that it was one of the innumerable rules of the Code that if the gun and the victim were in the same frame, the gun could not be pointed directly at the victim. Go figure.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Blanks can sting and even kill. The paper wad and powder blast are real if the bullet is not. Jon Erik Hexum was killed by a blank. Modern blanks are safer but even so, you don't want to be shot by one.

 

[p51]

When it comes to blanks, they actually DID use live ammo in films in a very few cases, but even back in the golden era that was not a safe thing to do for obvious reasons.
After filming "Taxi," Jimmy Cagney demanded he never get shot at with live ammo ever again.
But blank adapting is something that's really tough to do. People never see all the weapons jamming that occur on the set but get edited out.
For example, .45 caliber blanks in a M1911A1 pistol could be done until someone came up with a useable blank in the 90s. All the 1911s you see being fired are modified to other calibers or are instead 9MM star pistols which look really close. "Titanic" was the very first movie ever which used a real M1911 with crimped blanks.
That's why in "SGT York," Gary Cooper carried a Luger (instead of the M1911 the real man carried in that battle) as those were easy to blank adapt...

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" in most scenes they used Spanish-made Star pistols, which were near-ringers for Colt 1911s but which fired 9mm parabellum ammo and worked fine with blanks. One scene where this is obvious is just before the opening gunfight when Pike Bishop (William Holden) goes to a front window with his pistol pressed flat against the back of the station master and you can clearly see light glinting from the externally-mounted extractor of the pistol. Real Colts had an internal extractor, not visible from the outside. In the scene where Pike mercy-kills the horribly wounded Buck, a Colt was used because he only had to fire one shot.

 

[MikeKardec]

Up until the mid 30', I read that films used real guns with real bullets. That s why in all the real old films the shooter is always pointing the gun downwards to an angle slightly away from an intended victim and aiming for a sandbag no doubt.

Yeah, I too have been shot by blanks. Burning powder and wadding under the skin, not fun. It's best to not aim directly at the other actor. Safer with an auto, not all that much crud can fit through a 2mm hole.

Occasionally, live ammo was used for something special. As a kid I knew a guy named Rodd Redwing who was a famous trick shot. The story was (I didn't hear it from him) that he shot a cigarette out of Gary Cooper's mouth in a movie. Sounds insane but that was acceptable in the era. Rodd would do demonstrations where he would shoot a .22 through a swinging pane of glass with a half dollar sized hole in it then through the hole of a lifesaver the bullet would split on the blade of a knife (not so impressive once you've put a bullet through the hole of a life saver) and the two halves would pop balloons. I DID see that a number of times! He was so quick on the draw that he would ask the audience to get ready to clap their hands and when they saw him start to draw to clap ... he could usually get 2 to 3 shots off before anyone clapped. I saw him do the lifesaver demo in a Shakeys Pizza Parlor in Van Nuys in the late 1960s. Live ammo at Shakeys! Hard to believe.

More recently blanks have been doled out carefully for each take, only as many as will be fired in just that one take. Safety is taken pretty seriously these days. I believe that falling off of moving camera trucks has been the year in year out killer in Hollywood though.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I've read that Redwing had a trick where he would draw a knife and throw it, then draw his pistol and fire and the knife would stick into the bullet hole, the bullet having arrived first. that would be something to see.

 

[MikeKardec]

It sounds crazy but I heard the same thing. Given that he was pretty amazing at the stuff I saw him do and that sort of thing was what he did, I mean he was an actor and stuntman but he specialized in gun, knife, whip sort of stuff, I'm not surprised. He spent his whole life teaching himself new gags, like a carny.

He gave me some pointers on my shooting, no fast draw stuff, I was a kid 8 - 10, something like that. But he said get the pistol out and up ... the further into your line of sight the better. He'd shoot from the hip, 1950s style (much harder) but he said, and my Dad confirmed, most of the old gunfighters lifted the gun high but didn't really pause to use the sights. If you look at things like Fredrick Remington paintings this bears out.

I've heard it since from others but I think he was the first person I heard say that the actor who was the fastest getting a pistol out of a holster was Dean Martin. The fast draw thing never did that much for me, I suspect that its 20th Century practitioners were probably a great deal more proficient at it than people in the 19th, but the Hollywood lore part is interesting.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Most of the Hollywood fast-draws were performed from low-slung, steel-lined holsters that weren't invented yet in the 19th century. They were invented in the late '40s-early '50s by Arvo Ojala, a Finn, who was Redwing's rival as a stunt shooter. I've read that Jerry Lewis was the fastest, with Sammy Davis, Jr. close second. John Wayne, on the other hand, never affected the fast-gun mystique. He was just they guy still on his feet when the fight was over.

 

[MikeKardec]

Most of the Hollywood fast-draws were performed from low-slung, steel-lined holsters that weren't invented yet in the 19th century. They were invented in the late '40s-early '50s by Arvo Ojala, a Finn, who was Redwing's rival as a stunt shooter. I've read that Jerry Lewis was the fastest, with Sammy Davis, Jr. close second. John Wayne, on the other hand, never affected the fast-gun mystique. He was just they guy still on his feet when the fight was over.

I like your description of Wayne. Having dealt with a great deal of western history, my general take is that the reality of it all was that the first guy who decided the altercation had elevated to "shooting status" was nearly always the "fastest." Some, like Billy the Kid were just impossibly cool under fire, not necessarily a risk taker but someone who at what was probably an unconscious level was sure there wasn't a bullet with his name on it ... of course, as his history tells us, you only have to be wrong once!

Many guns in the 19th century were carried high and cross draw as that is a better carry if the pistol has a long holster and out of the way when riding. I have seen Buscadero rigs (holsters that rode low carried in a slot in the bottom of a cartridge belt) in late 19th century photographs but they definitely seem to be rare and expensive and worn by people who wanted to make a certain impression. Not surprising that they would become part of the costume for western films which often used contemporary western wear as if it was accurate 19th century garb. I'm sure you're right about the steel lined, highly formed holster, that definitely came later on.

To stay with the actual "Hollywood" topic, I've been drifting away from anything relating to the original post, it's interesting to see in films of Falcon's era the odd way certain small automatics are held. Elbow and gun tucked in tight to the body, gun high-ish but wrist oddly cocked downward. I found this mannerism very odd until, working on a film, I rented a Colt Pocket Hammerless from Stembridge and found that's kind of how you have to hold them. The grip angle is decidedly odd if you are used to 1911s or the brilliant Remington Model 51, which is kind of goofy looking but a natural pointer.

 

[philosophygirl78]

I viewed "The Maltese Falcon" last night. Something struck me as, not exactly odd, but supremely unusual. Miles Archer was shot with a Webley-Fosberry revolver. These are scarce, and studios would have been unlikely to have such a firearm, or to acquire one for use by a first-time director. In fact, Warner's "house" handguns were Colts. The first S&W revolver I viewed in a motion picture distributed by Warner Brothers was used by one of the assassins in "The Enforcer" (1952).

Where did Warner Brothers get the Webley-Fosberry revolver? Why? Few movie goers would know what this revolver is. And in 1941 fidelity to that sort of minutiae occurred almost never.

A Favorite!

 

[MikeKardec]

A Favorite!

I've always been impressed with the fact they slipped 3 homosexual characters and a woman who is distinctly "loose" past the Hays office (or whoever was running it at the time). I'm not sure if I've seen another picture of the era that packed that many "questionable" elements into one film ... though I'm sure some here could either remind me or fill me in on some I missed.

There's another element I find interesting: Bogart in particular did a lot of these movies that were sort of like the edge of an adventure story. They were mostly indoor pics, very much like plays, but they suggested a sprawling adventure story (like might have been made in the last 40 years) just over the horizon. The Maltese Falcon's back story, and the story that goes on after the characters depart seems to be full of exotic and international adventure, but we only experience the edge that Sam Spade sees as the story brushes past him. Casablanca is the same, Rick has a history escaping a France that is being over-run by the Germans and, at the end, he is about to depart on a desert adventure with Frenchy that could lead to all sorts of exciting chapters. To Have and Have Not actually goes outside into the elements a bit ... and there are others. Keeping them on budget seemed to constantly force the story to bring the sense of a whole adventure into a few rooms for a brief period of time.

Of course Casablanca was a play but some of the others could have been.