Gun Crazy (1950)
"She believes in two things... Love and Violence!"
NOIRVEMBER 2025
DAY 28
Hollywood Blacklist #3
Gun Crazy is a 1950 American crime film directed by Joseph H. Lewis. The script was written by blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo (under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman).
The film is about two misanthropes who fall in love and go on a crime spree together.
CAST
Laurie Starr - Peggy Cummins
Bart Tare - John Dall
Packett - Berry Kroeger
This is the story of Barton “Bart” Tare and his obsession with guns, and how it led to a dame.
As a teenager Bart (played by a teenage Russ Tamblyn) breaks into a hardware store to steal a gun. He’s put on juvenile trial and his family and friends beg the judge to show some leniency. They plead, saying “he’s not a killer, your honor. He’s just obsessed with guns.”
The other thing you gotta know about Bart, is that it’s not just an obsession with guns. Bart is a REALLY GOOD SHOT. He can hit a canteen 3 times in the air. The judge considers the testimony very carefully and sends Bart to reform school.
After reform school, and a stint in the army teaching marksmanship. His childhood buddies take him to a carnival where they watch a sharpshooter show. Bart is fascinated with the star of the show, Laurie Starr, a modern day Annie Oakley, who can shoot the flame off a candle.
The two gun nuts challenge each other to a sharpshooting contest and become smitten with each other in the process. Laurie arranges a job for Bart on the road to keep him around, which enrages their jealous boss, Packett, who wants Laurie all for himself.
One night, Packett tries to assault Laurie, when Bart fires a warning shot at Packett’s head. Packett fires both of them, and the two set off on the road and get married. Before they see the justice of the peace, Laurie warns Bart that she is bad, but that she will try to be good.
The honeymoon period ends when Bart’s savings runs out, and Laurie gets restless. Laurie puts a crazy ultimatum on Bart; “embark on a life of crime with me, or I’m leaving you.”
What’s a guy to do?
One thing’s for sure, these two love birds are GUN CRAZY!
“Bart, I’ve been kicked around all my life, and from now on, I’m gonna start kicking back!”
-Laurie Starr
Much like They Live By Night, released two years earlier, Gun Crazy is loosely based on the exploits of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. However unlike in They Live By Night, Gun Crazy is less romantic. It presents to the audience two very visibly broken people trying to exist in a world where the chips are stacked against them.
If They Live By Night is Bonnie and Clyde for the soft boys and girls out there, Gun Crazy is the emo kid version of Natural Born Killers.
Dalton Trumbo is possibly the most famous name associated with the Hollywood Blacklist. He was certainly my foray into learning about what it was, mostly because of the infamous photo of him writing in the bathtub, and that was how he enjoyed writing. That was so badass to me as a young screenwriting student in college. “This guy writes so much, he even does it in the bath. His mind is always firing off stories.”
Trumbo was one of “The Hollywood Ten”, Ten men who worked in the film industry, who were called to testify in front of HUAC on whether or not they were members of the communist party, but instead told congress to stuff it, and were all cited for contempt of court. Trumbo was a member of the communist party since the 1930’s. Back during the Spanish civil war, most people who declared themselves to be anti fascist, were also in the communist party. It was a safe space for left wing idealists who wanted to oppose fascism all over the world, and warned Americans of the oncoming threat of the Nazi Party in Germany.
In less than 15 years, the media and certain American politicians completely reframed what the party was, and it suddenly became less fashionable to be a communist.
Trumbo actually saw jail time and spent 11 months in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky. When he was released from prison, Trumbo was unable to find work, so he moved to Mexico with his family and two other blacklisted writers, and started churning out scripts under fake names. Gun Crazy was one of these scripts.
Other Trumbo scripts during this time period included;
Roman Holiday (1953)
The Brave One (1956)
Exodus (1958)
Spartacus (1960)
It was not revealed until 1992 that Trumbo had authored this script. In 1998, Gun Crazy was selected for preservation by the National Film registry, for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Gun Crazy is available to watch for free on YouTube or Tubi.