The Gun Runners *** (1958, Audie Murphy, Eddie Albert, Patricia Owens) – Classic Movie Review 8259

Don Siegel directs Audie Murphy in the 1958 black and white film noir crime drama The Gun Runners, the fourth version of Ernest Hemingway’s short story novel To Have and Have Not, following To Have and Have Not (1944), The Breaking Point (1950) and Wetbacks (1956).

Eddie Albert plays a silky smooth gunrunner called Hanagan who hires Florida charter boat owner Sam Martin (Murphy) to take him and his party to Havana at the time of the Cuban Revolution, but Murphy finds out what Albert’s Hanagan is up to. Patricia Owens plays Murphy’s woman Lucy, and Gita Hall plays Albert’s girlfriend, Eva, and Everett Sloane plays Sam’s alcoholic sidekick and first mate Harvey, Walter Brennan’s old role in 1944.

The Gun Runners is intriguing thanks to the interesting, involving performances, taut, suspenseful direction and the spare dialogue by Daniel Mainwaring and Paul Monash that Hemingway would have recognised if perhaps not exactly been proud of.

It was bold of Murphy to risk comparison here with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not, but the gamble does not pay off too badly. He had previously risked comparison with James Stewart in Destry Rides Again (1939) in his 1954 remake Destry.

Albert is outstanding as the villain, and it is good to have Everett Sloane, Richard Jaeckel, Jack Elam and John Harding aboard too.

Also in the cast are Carlos Romero as Carlos Contreras, Paul Birch as Sy Phillips, Herb Vigran as bar proprietor Freddy, aka Baldy, Peggy Maley as Blonde Barfly, Jack Elam as Arnold, John Qualen as pawnbroker-casino operator Pop, John Harding as fishing customer Peterson, Stephen Peck as singer-rebel leader Pepito, Ted Jacques as Commander Walsh and Richard Jaeckel as Buzurki, the blond henchman on boat.

It is the film debut of Gita Hall (born Birgitta Wetterhall in 1933 in Sweden), Miss Stockholm of 1953.

The Gun Runners was the first feature from Seven Arts Productions.

WW2 war hero Murphy was a troubled man. Siegel stated that Murphy often carried a pistol on the set and that many of the cast and crew were afraid of him. Clearly, Siegel was unhappy with having Murphy as his star.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8259

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