This Gun for Hire ***** (1942, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston) – Classic Movie Review 1,011

The 1942 film noir thriller This Gun for Hire transforms Graham Greene’s novel into a showcase for the sparkling new star team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake (just 20), propelling them into superstardom.

‘You are trying to make me go soft. Well, you can save it. I don’t go soft for anybody. ‘ – Philip Raven (Alan Ladd).

Director Frank Tuttle’s 1942 American film noir thriller This Gun for Hire transforms Graham Greene’s novel A Gun for Sale into a showcase for the sparkling new star team of Alan Ladd (aged 29) and Veronica Lake (just 20), propelling them into superstardom as a regular movie duo in a series of blockbuster movies, including Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key (also 1942) and Raymond Chandler’s The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Saigon (1948).

Wow, they got to star in movies from Greene, Hammett and Chandler!

Greene’s novel makes an awesome backdrop for the talents of new star Ladd, who gives an inspired, memorably chilling performance in one of his finest roles as a trench-coated hired killer who is mixed up with blonde singer Lake and Fifth Columnists while avenging his being double crossed at the hands of his treacherous employer.

Albert Maltz and W R Burnett’s ideal screenplay is complex but clear and literate. It adapts Greene’s riveting yarn to an American backdrop, lives and characters, and adds a crowd-pleasing wartime foreign spies theme too, without any sense of strain. And indeed it adapts to being re-created as noir thriller material perfectly too.

The dark passions of film noir are served chillingly cold, as revenge must best be, by director Tuttle. John F Seitz’s black and white cinematography is splendidly noir and there is a notable score from David Buttolph.

Ladd stars as hit-man Philip Raven, who shoots a blackmailer and his beautiful female companion dead. He is paid in marked bills by his treacherous employer Willard Gates (Laird Cregar), who is working with foreign spies.

Lake plays entertainer Ellen Graham, the girlfriend of police Lieutenant Crane (Robert Preston), who is pursuing Raven. She has been ordered by a Senate committee to help in the investigation against Gates. Raven meets Ellen on a train and they gradually form an uneasy alliance to try to bring down Gates.

Laird Cregar puts in a monstrously scary appearance as the irredeemable villain everyone wants to bring down and there is a fine cast of actors who look like they live and sometimes die in the film noir world.

Among them are Tully Marshall, Mikhail Rasumny, Marc Lawrence, Pamela Blake, Harry Shannon, Frank Ferguson, James Farley, Roger Imhof, Olin Howland, Chester Clute, Clem Bevans, Harry Hayden and Yvonne De Carlo in an early role.

Yvonne De Carlo (Margaret Yvonne Middleton) has the single line ‘Cigarette, sir?’ in the Neptune Club scene. That cost her her job. Making the film got her fired as a dancer for theatrical producer Earl Carroll.

But ultimately This Gun for Hire is Ladd’s triumph, refreshingly playing a new kind of anti-hero for American cinema – silent and sinister, creepy and cold, a violent, but puny, pint-sized thug with few redeeming features, except for a love of cats and children. The character is an American cousin of the psychotic young tearaway Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough) in Greene’s Brighton Rock.

Ladd and Lake, separately and together, are quintessentially Forties creations here.

Lake performs Frank Loesser’s ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t’, but she is dubbed by Martha Mears.

The Blue Dahlia (1946) was Chandler’s first original film script. He wrote the first half in less than six weeks and sent it to a very happy Paramount Pictures. But, later, Chandler was unimpressed by Ladd as a tough guy. He said: ‘Ladd is hard, bitter and occasionally charming, but he is after all a small boy’s idea of a tough guy. Bogart is the genuine article.’

This Gun for Hire was remade as 1957’s Short Cut to Hell, directed by James Cagney, and as a 1991 TV movie with Robert Wagner.

Ladd was only 50 when he died on January 29 1964 and so was Lake when she died on July 7 1973.

This Gun For Hire is directed by Frank Tuttle, runs 83 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Albert Maltz and W R Burnett, based on Graham Greene’s novel A Gun for Sale, is shot in black and white by John F Seitz, is produced by Buddy G DeSylva (executive producer) and Richard M Blumenthal (associate producer), and scored by David Buttolph, with Production Design by Lynd Ward and Art Direction by Hans Dreier and Robert Usher.

The budget was around $500,000 and it took $1 million at the US box office in 1942.

Graham Greene’s 1936 novel A Gun for Sale was published in America with the same title as the film. The film keeps Greene’s plotline but moves the European location to America.

First Veronica Lake was announced as the star and then Robert Preston was given the other main role. Lake and Preston got above-the-title star billing, but Ladd received an ‘and introducing’ credit. Despite his fourth billing, the film made Ladd a star after eight years of tenacious trying.

The cast are Veronica Lake as Ellen Graham, Robert Preston as Michael Crane, Laird Cregar as Willard Gates, Alan Ladd as Philip Raven, Tully Marshall as Alvin Brewster, Marc Lawrence as Tommy, Olin Howland as Blair Fletcher, Roger Imhof as Senator Burnett, Pamela Blake as Annie, Frank Ferguson as Albert Baker, Victor Kilian as Drew, Patricia Farr as Ruby, Harry Shannon as Steve Finnerty, Charles C Wilson as the Police Captain, Mikhail Rasumny as Slukey, Bernadene Hayes as Albert Baker’s Secretary, Mary Davenport as Salesgirl, Chester Clute as Rooming House Manager, Charles Arnt as Male Dressmaker, Earle S Dewey as Mr Collins, Clem Bevans as Scissor Grinder, Lynda Grey as Gates’s Secretary, Virita Campbell as Little Girl, Frank Ferguson, James Farley, Roger Imhof, Olin Howland, Harry Hayden and Yvonne De Carlo.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1,011

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