Synopsis
Gun obsessed marksman Barton Tare (Dall) falls in love with carnival markswoman Annie Laurie Starr (Cummins). After their marriage, the couple carry out a series of robberies to provide Annie Laurie with the luxuries she craves. Annie Laurie does not share Bart's unwillingness to shoot anyone who interferes. Discovered by the police, they flee to Bart's hometown and hide out with his sister and her family. Discovered once again, they are tracked through hills Bart knows from childhood. Confronted by his childhood buddies, Bart finally shoots to kill.
TCM Classic Film Festival, 2012
Gun Crazy was featured in the Noir Style
theme at the 2012 TCM
Classic Film Festival. Guest speakers were Peggy Cummins and film noir expert
Eddie Muller. Muller called Gun Crazy the precursor of Jean-Luc
Godard's Breathless (1960) and Arthur Penn's
Bonnie and Clyde (1967). He identified the performances that define
noir as Richard Widmark in Night and the City (1950) and Peggy
Cummins in Gun Crazy.
Cummins, returning to the US for the first time in more than sixty years,
discussed the film and her time in Hollywood. After acting in plays and films as a
teenager in England, she was brought to Hollywood by producer Darryl F. Zanuck in
1945 to play the sexually charged title role in Forever Amber (1947).
However, it was decided that she was too young and not sexy enough, so the part
went to Linda Darnell. While in Hollywood she met major personalities including
Tyrone Power, Ernst Lubitsch, and Howard Hughes. (She declined the latter's dinner
invitation.) Cummins stated that she was lucky to be cast as Annie Laurie Starr in
Gun Crazy, here final Hollywood film. It was a meaty part, and she
loved the script. She also felt that her costar John Dall was a great actor who
helped her give a good performance. Cummins stated that everyone involved with
Gun Crazy did their best, and that they thought the film would be
okay,
but they did not have the expectation that it would become an
influential film or that she would be appearing at a festival showing decades
later.
Further Reading