Best Horror Movies. Definition of gun for hire in the AudioEnglish.org Dictionary. [16], Although Ladd only received fourth billing, the film made him a star, due to fan reaction and critical praise.[17]. (1923) (Criterion Collection) UK Only [Blu-ray] by Harold Lloyd Blu-ray £17.99 Customers who viewed this item also viewed Meanwhile, pert entertainer Ellen Graham, girlfriend of police Lieut. Ellen helps Raven escape the dragnet, hoping she has appealed to his patriotism. An armored truck driver and his ex-wife conspire with a gang to have his own truck robbed on the route. £12.44. He has been trying to get a foothold in pictures for eight years, but received no encouragement, although he tried every angle known to town - extra work, bit parts, stock contracts, dramatic schools, [and] assault of the casting offices. Top 200 of all time 150 Essential Comedies. He is about to kill her, but is interrupted by workmen, allowing Ellen to flee. The police corner them in a railroad yard, but wait for daylight to move in. Crime, Certificate: Passed Certificate: Passed Crane (who's after Raven) is enlisted by a Senate committee to help investigate Gates. The Blue Dahlia [DVD] Alan Ladd. However, he believes that he was just killing an ordinary person, but before he knows it, there's a massive manhunt for him. Veronica Lake is the stunning female of the piece, she glides through the picture with ease as Ellen, a character with her own issues, but thankfully she's integral outside of any sort of romantic plot, even though she is the only one who gets close enough to Raven to learn anything about what makes him tick.Robert Preston as Michael Crane was to be the pics focus but he becomes a mere side part thanks to Ladd's barnstorming show, and unsurprisingly Laird Cregar is suitably shifty as Gates. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/12/us/deforest-kelley-79-creator-of-dr-mccoy-on-star-trek.html, "Marlene Dietrich Has Star Role in Playhouse Drama", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=This_Gun_for_Hire&oldid=1018592479, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Earle S. Dewey as Mr. Collins (as Earle Dewey), This page was last edited on 18 April 2021, at 22:04. After this stinging performance, he has something to live up to—or live down. However, he breaks his promise to her and kills a policeman who had almost managed to capture him to get away. Veronica Lake stuns with her killer trio of beauty & wit & modesty in her inverted femme fatale role. Also also, in the two months since I initially posted this, my feelings for the book have had a chance to settle a bit, so there’s now an … [18], The Los Angeles Times wrote, "to say the film is a success is an understatement. Nick Bianco is caught during a botched jewellery heist. From Gates's club, she tries to contact Crane, but he has left San Francisco to return to Los Angeles. In This Gun For Hire, Ladd's Raven is loving toward only one kind of creature: cats, and when Tuttle's camera captures him smiling, in two of the three cases the predominantly uncharacteristic grin is aroused by the sight of a feline. After successfully pulling off his latest murder, Raven reports to his boss, effeminate fifth columnist Willard Gates (Laird Cregar). Movie & TV guides. Within 10-minutes he’s committed a contract murder, killed a woman to avoid getting caught, and seriously considered killing a young girl for the same reason. [9] (One of them was Alan Baxter. This Gun For Hire Language: English First published five years after he introduced Arthur Abdel Simpson in the comic thriller The Light of Day , Eric Ambler turns the spotlight back to his compelling antihero—a man you can’t help but root for. Alan Ladd is the king of playing stoical characters. Also, you can also find this on my rarely-used Wordpress if you so desire. In contemporary wartime San Francisco, chemist and blackmailer Albert Baker is killed by hitman Philip Raven, who recovers a stolen chemical formula. This Gun for Hire is a 1942 American film noir crime film directed by Frank Tuttle and starring Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd. The novel was first published by Doubleday Doran in the US in June 1936 as This Gun for Hire and by William Heinemann in the UK in July 1936 as A Gun for Sale. He wires ahead to alert the police, but Raven forces Ellen at gunpoint to help him elude them again. Lake is nightclub chanteuse Ellen, and her police detective boyfriend Michael (Robert Preston) is on the hunt for assassin-for-hire Philip Raven (Ladd), after Raven performed a hit on a chemist with a secret formula and a taste for blackmail. Black Angel [DVD] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] Dan Duryea. Top 200 of all time 150 Essential Comedies. "[20], John Houseman later wrote Ladd played "a professional killer with a poignant and desolate ferocity that made him unique, for a time, among the male heroes of his day. Beige covers and forest green spine labels, no dust jacket. Raven reveals to Ellen that he was orphaned at a young age and raised by an abusive aunt. Featuring. The briefcase used by Alan Ladd in the film is the same briefcase he used as Raven in This Gun for Hire – the actor considered the prop good luck. Fiction . The 1942 thriller This Gun for Hire, which opened five months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was closely adapted from Graham Greene’s 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett and directed for Paramount by the veteran William Tuttle. While Crane questions Tommy, and makes a phone call to Ellen's hotel, Raven arrives and hides outside, where he sees Tommy discard Ellen's purse, to keep Crane from spotting it. Our editors have rounded up their most anticipated horror movies of the year. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Only 2 left in stock. [7] The book's plot line was kept essentially unchanged, though moved from the original European and British setting to an American one. Tweet. DVD. 4.3 out of 5 stars 162. It is based on the 1936 novel A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene (published in America with the same title as the film).[4]. Alternative titles. But on this occasion our anti-hero, lone wolf protagonist is an assassin, overshadowed by a dark past that has shaped him into an unnerving killer. Written by The prosecution offer him a more lenient sentence if he squeals on his accomplices but he doesn't roll over on them. This Gun for Hire, directed in 1942 by Frank Tuttle, is a film rendition of Graham Greene’s novel, “A Gun for Sale”. Proper usage and audio pronunciation (plus IPA phonetic transcription) of the word gun for hire. By September, he had been cast and signed to a long-term Paramount contract.[12]. Country. By chance, Raven and Ellen sit next to each other. An ex-bomber pilot is suspected of murdering his unfaithful wife. Alan Ladd-Wikipedia. Shortly afterwards, The New York Times reported: Tuttle and the studio are showing more than a passing enthusiasm for Ladd. It's a fine film in its own right, it's tightly filmed, wonderfully scripted and contains a great noir ending, but ultimately it's all about the cold as death hit-man Raven, and the great performance by the man who played him. Raven passes up the opportunity to kill Crane when he sees Ellen helping the detective. In 1978 Tony Richardson announced he intended to remake the film, however, no movie resulted. Title: Year. Directed by Frank Tuttle. In Le Samouraï, Delon's killer showed love for a pet canary. Three years into the sentence an event changes his mind. Richfield Tower - 555 South Flower Street, Los Angeles, California, USA. These included 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. 4.5 out of 5 stars 222. It seems that the man he killed is a senator. Then, the breaks began. She tells him that the formula he recovered was for a poison gas that Nitro is selling to the Japanese and begs him to extract a signed confession instead of killing Gates. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. [13] Lake and Preston were given above-the-title star billing, with Ladd given an "and introducing" credit. Raven and Ellen are confronted as they enter the club, so Raven takes her hostage as he flees. (1) The film’s enduring significance lies in its influence on a particular subset of classic and post-classic noir films featuring the figure of the lone assassin. Willard Gates hires Raven to shoot man then double crosses him by shopping him to the police. After being released from prison, notorious thief Roy Earle is hired by his old boss to help a group of inexperienced criminals plan and carry out the robbery of a California resort. Raven sets out for the ultimate revenge and dovetailing towards the explosive finale with him is sultry conjurer Ellen Graham and honest cop Michael Crane.Based on the Graham Greene novel A Gun For Sale, this is not a straight out adaptation, the plot has been re-jigged with very impressive results. Crane is lowered on a scaffold and exchanges gunfire with Raven, wounding him. After being hired to find an ex-con's former girlfriend, Philip Marlowe is drawn into a deeply complex web of mystery and deceit. Gates orders Tommy to guard his door. This Gun For Hire. Veronica Lake was announced early as a female lead, with Macdonald Carey, who had been signed by Paramount following his appearance on Broadway in Lady in the Dark — mooted as a possible male lead. Raven searches the house and rescues her. Movie & TV guides. [a] Paramount bought the rights, and announced Gertrude Michael as a possible star. Raven is double-crossed by his employer, Willard Gates, who pays him with marked bills and reports them to the Los Angeles Police Department as stolen from his company, Nitro Chemical Corporation of Los Angeles. This Gun for Hire (1942) Tweet. Raven disguises himself in Tommy's uniform and gas mask to surprise Gates, forcing him to take him to company president Alvin Brewster, the mastermind of the treasonous Nitro sale. This Gun For Hire (1942) — one of the finest of the early film noirs out there — and the first to show off the mutual talents of Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd — is a classic of its kind, which much to interest the casual movie buff, the armchair semiotician, or anybody … Adventure. Raven realizes that Ellen is in danger. DVD. Meanwhile, pert entertainer Ellen Graham, girlfriend of police Lieut. Mark Dixon wants to be something his old man wasn't: a guy on the right side of the law. 10 August 2020, 3:30 am. Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake star in This Gun for Hire, a hard-edged story of love, power and betrayal set in the seamy underworld of the 1940's. Genre. Then, she is taken to a clandestine meeting with Senator Burnett, where she learns that Gates and Nitro Chemical are under investigation as suspected traitors, and is recruited to spy on Gates. Best Horror Movies. The most enlightening thing I found when reading up on the film was that the studio were so blown away by the efforts of Alan Ladd as Raven, they turned the script around to make him the films chief axis, and boy what a smart move that was for this is Alan Ladd's show all the way.Ladd plays Raven with brilliant icy veneer, he's cold and devoid of emotion, his only trip to anything resembling caring is an affinity to cats because in his own words, "cats don't need anyone, they are on their own, just like me", the result is one of the most unnerving killers put on to the 40s cinema screens. This Gun for Hire is an exceptional film noir with Ladd and Lake in their most famous pairing having gone on to work together on several more films almost immediately in The Glass Key an adaptation of a Dashiell Hammett novel. There are no approved quotes yet for this movie. Raven, seeking Gates for revenge, meets Ellen on the train; their relationship gradually evolves from that of killer and potential victim to an uneasy alliance against a common enemy. Was this review helpful to you? This item: This Gun For Hire (Eureka Classics) Blu-ray by Veronica LAKE Blu-ray £14.99 Show Boat (1936) (Criterion Collection) UK Only [Blu-ray] by Irene Dunne Blu-ray £17.99 Safety Last! Though no masterpiece, it's a film noir landmark – an essential watch. Huge collection, amazing choice, 100+ million high quality, affordable RF and RM images. The next morning, Gates is alarmed when he sees them asleep with Raven's head on her shoulder. This Gun For Hire is actually A Gun For Sale, but whatever the title it has all the noiry hallmarks that defined the era, formed the Hollywood version of crime noir and thus spread the good word back to Though billed fourth in This Gun For Hire, Alan Ladd was catapulted to stardom in the role of Phillip Raven, a ruthless professional killer with a long-suppressed streak of decency. Veronica Lake Robert Preston Laird Cregar. "[19], Albert Maltz, who worked on the script, later said "it was a very creaky melodrama - in my opinion, pretty second rate. Action, Certificate: Passed This Gun for Hire, shares Greene’s dark and disturbing vision of the fate of humanity. DVD. An unethical lawyer, with an older brother he wants to help, becomes a partner with a client in the numbers racket. When assassin Philip Raven shoots a blackmailer and his beautiful female companion dead, he is paid off in marked bills by his treasonous employer who is working with foreign spies. Alan Ladd reprised his role in both adaptations while Veronica Lake reprised in the latter, but was replaced with Joan Blondell in the former. [5] Later that year, the cast was announced as being Akim Tamiroff, Ray Milland, and Ida Lupino, with Dore Schary writing the script.[6]. The Glass Key [DVD] Alan Ladd. "[21], Diabolique later wrote Ladd "gives an electric debut star performance – cold, blonde, tough, mysterious, ruthless, cat-loving, redeemable – and stole the film, but a lot of this was due to Lake, who matches him beautifully (at five foot two, she was one of the few female actors shorter than him); poor old Robert Preston is completely overshadowed. Film noir. Find the perfect this gun for hire film stock photo. Robert Preston was given the other main role, replacing Carey. [10] another was DeForest Kelley [11]} Alan Ladd screen tested. However, the film was not made for several more years; it was reactivated in 1941, with Frank Tuttle assigned as director. 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