‘Gun Crazy’ Has a Classic Robbery Scene … But We Never See the Actual Holdup

John Dall, Peggy Cummins, 'Gun Crazy' (1950).

For a dizzying moment
spectators become 
accomplices to a crime

By Paul Parcellin

“Gun Crazy” (1950)

The thoroughly American story of violence and rebellion that is “Gun Crazy” influenced generations of filmmakers since its release and laid the groundwork for many a crime picture to come. One of its most obvious kin is probably Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) (the berets and sweaters worn by femmes fatale in both films are a visual link between the two).

In “Gun Crazy,” one scene in particular, a robbery that takes place off camera, stands out as the most recognizable and influential in noir. 

Cummins as Laurie,
sideshow queen. 

Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) is a carnival sharpshooter dressed in a cowgirl outfit performing in the sideshow. Bart Tare (John Dall) faces off with her in a shooting contest and the competition takes on an erotic charge. It’s lust at first sight for this all-American couple with a gun fetish and they get hitched on the spur of the moment. But Laurie wants diamonds and furs and she browbeats Bart into sticking up stores, which they do before stepping up to the big leagues.

Frequently celebrated for the groundbreaking cinema it is, the Hampton robbery scene, the sharp shooting pair's first bank stickup, resonates with a kind of ragged energy. Director Joseph H. Lewis shot the entire robbery sequence, more than three minutes in duration, in one long take with a camera in the back seat of the getaway car. 

Dall as Bart,
born to shoot.

Lewis was unsure if the bank scene would work. So he shot a test scene with a hand-held 16mm camera and used high school kids as stand-ins for the two stars. The film's producers, the King brothers, Morris, Frank and Hyman, were impressed.

The getaway car is a stretch Cadillac with the rear seat removed to make room for Lewis and other crew who were crowded into the back. They mounted the camera on a greased wood platform so that it could be moved easily. Microphones hidden in the sun visors picked up dialogue and two sound men stationed on the roof with boom microphones recorded the sounds of the car.

The result is a scene that almost leaps off the screen. It feels authentic and raw due largely to its unscripted elements. As Bart and Laurie approach the bank, a car pulls out of a parking space and they pull into it. This was not prearranged (if no parking space was available they planned to double park). The patter between the two novice bank robbers, both before and after the heist, is improvised. No one, other than the bank’s staff and the police, knew that a film was being made — some on the street thought they were witnessing a real robbery.

Laurie and Bart, on the lam and incognito.

Once the robbery gets under way, Laurie waits in the car while Bart ducks into the bank. Both are clad in cowboy outfits, finally acting out the roles of real desperados that they’d only been cosplaying for carnival crowds. The American myth of the old west, with its history of violence and lawlessness, is the larcenous duo’s fantasy come to life.

Despite the buildup to the big event, we never see the heist take place — an unconventional move on the filmmaker’s part. This is due, in part, to the film’s budget restrictions, but Lewis’s unconventional approach has a payoff. 

We spend the duration of the robbery with Laurie, who stays cool when things start to go south. A cop strolls into the shot and lingers in front of the bank as Bart is inside. She hops out of the car and chats with the peace officer, then takes swift action once Bart barrels out of the bank. 

As they make their getaway, she turns to see if the cops are on their tail. Facing the camera, she grins, thoroughly enjoying the intense and dangerous dash from the law. It’s a carefully designed shot. Bart’s eyes are on the road and he doesn't see Laurie’s thrilled expression as they flirt with disaster. Had he realized that she's an adrenaline junky, and a dangerously unbalanced one at that, would he have dropped her and run the other way? Probably not, but this revealing, reckless moment makes it plain that their criminal partnership is teetering on the edge of destruction.

With the camera stationed behind the couple, the audience sees the entire scene from the back seat of the getaway car, which makes viewers not only spectators but virtual accomplices to the crime. 

Although more common today, this kind of offbeat camera placement was more of a novelty in 1950. Of course, “They Live By Night” (1948) includes a robbery scene in which the camera stays trained on the car rather than recording the holdup that's under way. In "The Killers" (1946), a robbery scene is shot in one long take. But neither of those films use the more daring camera placement of "Gun Crazy," putting it inside the moving vehicle and taking us, the audience, along for the ride. 

A narrow escape.

Quentin Tarantino doesn’t specifically mention “Gun Crazy” as a direct influence on “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), or the film's off-screen diamond heist. But he's a “Gun Crazy” admirer [he also cites Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956) and Lewis’s “The Big Combo” (1955) as influences] so it’s not a stretch to imagine that he borrowed a page from Lewis’s playbook and left the heist to the viewer's imagination. 

Like “Gun Crazy,” “Reservoir Dogs” focuses on the aftermath of a crime and the relationships among characters rather than the details of the crime itself. Both films were made under tight budgets, so eliminating an extra expense would be an attractive option for both directors.

The "Gun Crazy" bank robbery scene evolved as it was revised and reworked from its original form. Blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo rewrote MacKinlay Kantor’s script and mostly left the robbery scene intact. Kantor had written a longer, more comedic exchange between Laurie and the policeman, but Trumbo trimmed it down. 

It was Lewis’s idea to make it all one continuous shot, from the pair approaching the bank, to the robbery and finally the getaway, and those may be the film's most revealing moments. While the robbery takes place offscreen we’re given a chance to size up Laurie and calculate her and Bart’s odds of survival. Clearly, neither of them will be robbing banks for long.

'Highway 301': There's a Killer on the Road

Wally Cassell, Steve Cochran, Richard Egan, Edward Norris,
Robert Webber, 'Highway 301' (1950). 

It’s a wonder that anyone gets through the first few minutes of "Highway 301," a noir based on the true-life crime wave perpetrated by an outfit called the Tri-State Gang. The film is a taut little thriller that starts off with wooden speeches by three, count ‘em, three state governors, the honorable gentlemen of  North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, where the real Tri-State Gang did its dirty work. Their turgid preambles are the same: Crime doesn’t pay, kids. It’ll make you roll your eyes and, depending on where you are, either change the channel or head for the snack bar.

But don't be put off. You might assume that the rest of the movie is just as cringe-worthy as the opening sequence but you’d be dead wrong. The action whips up to a furious pace as we follow a gang of bank robbers led by George Legenza (Steve Cochran), who seldom hesitates to squeeze the trigger whenever someone gets in his way — and that “someone” can include any of the gang members’ women who are traveling with them. He’s got pure Freon coursing through his veins and a thousand-yard stare that could stop a freight train. This being noir, the film admirably avoids giving us a fancy psychological profile explaining how he ended up this way. Bad childhood? Obviously, but who cares? He’s a B-movie killing machine. Enough said.

The rest of the hoods are a good deal less trigger happy than their boss and are quite subservient to him — who wouldn’t be? The guy’s nuts. They include Herbie Brooks (Richard Egan), Bobby Mais (Wally Cassell), Bill Phillips (Robert Webber) and the driver (Edward Norris). 

Steve Cochran, Gaby André.

French-Canadian Lee Fontaine (Gaby Andre), newly wed to gang member Bill Phillips (Robert Webber), hangs out with the band of henchmen not realizing that she’s sitting on a powder keg. Bill tells her that he and his buddies deal in women’s apparel and furs. Legenza’s girlfriend Madeline Welton (Aline Towne) who offers a bit of sarcastic comic relief, scoffs at the naive Lee. “Furs that fell off the back of a truck,” she sneers. Tension mounts as Lee finally gets the full picture of what’s going on. She knows too much, which is a surefire way to end up in a landfill. 

Voiceover narration by head investigator Det. Sgt. Truscott (Edmon Ryan) sets up each sequence, giving the film a documentary feel which fits well in this true crime drama. The cops want desperately to stop the gang’s wave of murder and robbery which Truscott characterizes as terrorism.

Director Andrew L. Stone keeps the action flowing and the tension wound as tightly as a two dollar watch. He plays with the audience’s emotions and expectations the way a conductor directs a symphony. Particularly good are his action sequences that include car chases and shootouts. One standout sequence moves from the interior of an apartment building to a park and finally to city streets and ends with a stunning twist. He also ramps up the jitteriness in a chase scene involving elevators and staircases. The tension of watching the elevator floor indicator dial move as a killer approaches his victim is heart-stopping. The unintended corker is that the elevator operator witnesses a particularly vicious murder and seems barely moved by it — maybe that’s business as usual in the elevator game. 

The film boasts the use of real-life locations, but most of it was shot on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. The studio rushed it into production to capitalize on the success of “White Heat,” in which Cochran co-starred with James Cagney. Like his role in the Cagney film, Cochran again fits perfectly into the part of a deadly lothario who acts with chilling brutality. It’s understandable that audiences in 1950 would be shocked by the level of violence depicted here — which probably helps explain the outsized concession that allowed the three governors the chance to hijack the first few minutes of the film.

Even so, we’re apt to concede that, yes, crime doesn’t pay, as the three stuffed shirts tell us, but it can also be pretty entertaining, and that’s why it’s worth watching.