THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1942) Shout! Factory

Alan Ladd skyrocketed to instant fame as the cool and calculating assassin, Philip Raven in Frank Tuttle’s This Gun for Hire (1942) – a watered-down version of Graham Greene’s 1936 novel of ‘A Gun for Sale’. 2oth Century-Fox and Paramount vied for the rights to produce it; the latter, eventually winning this high-stakes bidding war; then, announcing Gertrude Michael as the picture’s star. Who?!? From this rather inauspicious casting decision, the studio made a few others: Akim Tamiroff as the baddie, Ray Milland, as Raven and Ida Lupino as Ellen, with screenwriter, Dore Schary brought on board to polish Greene’s proses. At this juncture, everything fell apart – This Gun for Hire seemingly put into endless turnaround by its producer, Buddy G. DeSylva; Paramount, investing its time and energies on other projects until late 1941, when Tuttle’s name was finally attached to the project. It is fairly safe to suggest This Gun for Hire would be nothing at all without the casting of Ladd as the cruel and brooding killer. And yet, Ladd was not a shoe-in for the part. Nor, at 5 ft. 6 in. did he immediately appeal to casting agents as ‘leading man’ material. Aside: even after the die was cast in Ladd’s favor, the actor continued to battle with his inner demons. These chronically resisted this ‘he-man’ status. Loretta Young, Ladd’s costar in Star-Spangled Rhythm (1942) famously deconstructed Ladd’s insecurities in her autobiography, finding him “petulant...everything that concerned him was very serious... I think he was very conscious of his looks…Jimmy Cagney was not tall, but somehow Jimmy was at terms with himself, always. I don’t think Alan Ladd ever came to terms with himself.”        

It was Ladd’s stage performance in The Mikado in 1933 that first brought him to the attention of Universal Pictures. But his seven-year contract with that studio yielded little promise. Indeed, after only 6 months, Ladd was dropped, along with another hopeful – Tyrone Power.  Graduating high school at the age of 20, Ladd tried his hand at advertising, sold cash registers, and, opened his own burger and malt shop. All of these ventures failed. He also went to work as a grip over at Warner Bros. – a stint, lasting 2-years until a fall from a scaffold convinced him this too was a dead-end career path. From these inauspicious false starts, Ladd scrimped together enough cash to attend acting school. But his introverted lack of self-confidence seemed an ill fit for acting. After another fallow period in 1936, Ladd became a modest hit on KFWB radio, doing 20 shows a week for 3-years. And here is where Ladd received his first big break – noticed by talent agent, Sue Carol, who set about crafting a new persona for the still relatively ‘young’ find. Rechristening Ladd as ‘Colin Farrell’, Carol worked like hell to get him cast in 2 forgettable movies in 1939. Under her auspices, Ladd also tested for the lead in Golden Boy; the part eventually going to William Holden instead. For the next 2-years, Ladd appeared as background filler in The Green Hornet (1940), Her First Romance (1940), The Black Cat (1941), The Reluctant Dragon (1941) and Citizen Kane (1941) – the latter, as a newspaper reporter, barely glimpsed in the penultimate scene of inquiry – and still, with no breakout to the big time in sight. His ‘death scene’ in RKO’s Joan of Paris (1942) got him noticed; RKO, making a pitch to increase his salary to $400 a week. However, a better offer loomed on the horizon.

Although Paramount advanced Ladd a mere $300 a week (and fourth billing) to appear in This Gun for Hire, it was a very showy part.  This undoubtedly appealed to Ladd. It had taken him 8 long years to find his niche in Hollywood. But with this movie, Ladd cemented his legendary persona as ‘tough guy’ - a steely-eyed, avenging angel with unanticipated ferocity roiling just beneath the surface. In the process, Ladd rewrote the rules for playing common hoods and gangsters – the pugnacious and physically unappealing goon, gaudily attired and flashing jack, was replaced by the glacially handsome, well-tailored slickster who never had to fly off the handle, wildly gesticulating, in order for everyone to know he meant business. The other great ‘good fortune’ of the picture was the casting Veronica Lake – top-billed as Ellen Graham, a nightclub chanteuse with a wicked jaw, silken-smooth voice, and a shock of blonde hair, placed just so over one eye to add an air of mystery. Lake, who by all accounts from her fellow performers was a royal pain in the ass, had begun her career under contact to MGM – and to no effect. Like Ladd, Lake – born, Constance Frances Marie Ockelman - bounced around, appearing in live theater where she made ‘a fetching little trick’ of a disposable part, before appearing in an even smaller one in 1939’s Sorority House for RKO – her scenes, cut before its release. In reality, Lake aspired to become a surgeon and considered acting merely as a way to raise the necessary funds to attend medical school.  Ah, but Lake’s ace in the hole was Fred Wilcox, an assistant director who saw her potential as a star, shot a screen test, and showed it to producer, Arthur Hornblow Jr.  Cast in the military drama, I Wanted Wings (1940), Lake, still in her teens, became an overnight sensation; Hornblow, changing her name to Veronica Lake, because her eyes were as ‘calm and clear’ as a blue lake. Like her new name, the trademarking of Lake’s ‘peek-a-boo’ hairstyle also happened by accident. In I Wanted Wings she played an empathetic drunk. In one scene, Lake’s arm slipped while leaning on a table, her baby-fine hair lazily falling across her face, creating an immediate sensation.  

Lake followed up this debut with her first starring role, as ‘the girl’ opposite Joel McCrea in Sullivan's Travels (1941), completing the picture, despite being six months pregnant. Ladd and Lake seem like such natures together, we forget that in This Gun for Hire they are not the romantic leads: Lake’s Ellen, engaged to a cop, Michael Crane, played with rather stuffy aplomb by Robert Preston (in a part originally slated for Macdonald Carey). Sensing the on-screen chemistry between Lake and Ladd in their brief scenes together, the studio assigned screenwriters, Albert Maltz and W.R. Burnett to rework Greene’s novel even further, to include more moments where they could gently spar with half-cocked innuendo. And it remains primarily for these moments that This Gun for Hire became – and has remained – a classic to this day; something in the way Lake’s quiet, sad-eyed empathy for the killer, barricaded in a railroad car as her boyfriend and the police close in, manages to awaken, though never soften, the heart of the man. Oh, what one ‘good woman’ can do. Paramount execs were ecstatic. Even before This Gun for Hire wrapped, the studio began plans to co-star Lake and Ladd again in an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key.

This Gun for Hire is set in wartime San Francisco. Albert Baker (Frank Ferguson), a chemist and blackmailer, is murdered by paid assassin, Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), who has been assigned by Willard Gates (Laird Cregar) to recover a stolen chemical formula. Willard promises a handsome stipend to Raven but then double-crosses him by paying out in marked bills he reports as stolen from his company, Nitro Chemical Corp. Learning of this frame-up, Raven plots revenge. Meanwhile, LAPD Detective Lieutenant, Michael Crane (Robert Preston) is vacationing in Frisco with his girlfriend, nightclub singer, Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake). Alas, pleasure will have to wait as Mike is almost immediately assigned to investigate this homicide. Mike goes after Raven. But the assassin is good – very good, indeed, and manages, at every turn, to elude him. In one of those sublime movie-land wrinkles that never fails to court kismet, Gates hires Ellen to appear at his nightclub after her audition – doing magic tricks and singing the ebullient little ditty, ‘Now You See It, Now You Don’t’ proves a winner. Alas, a clandestine encounter with Senator Burnett (Roger Imhof) alerts Ellen to an unholy surprise: Gates and Nitro Chemical are up to no good – suspected as traitors selling chemical warfare to the Japanese. So, Ellen gets recruited by Mike to spy on Gates.

Unknown to each other, Ellen and Gates board the same train bound for Los Angeles, pursued by Raven. By happenstance, Raven and Ellen are seated next to each other. He falls asleep, wearily resting his head upon her shoulder. Alarmed, and suspecting Raven and Ellen as a couple, Gates wires ahead to alert the police. Only Raven again proves two steps ahead of their game of cat and mouse, taking Ellen hostage. He is about to kill her when interrupted by workmen. Ellen flees back to Frisco and Gates’ club, where she desperately tries to contact her boyfriend. Alas, Mike has already left for L.A. Believing the enemy is within, Gates cordially invites Ellen to his mansion for dinner. However, upon her arrival, Gates orders his chauffeur, Tommy (Marc Lawrence) to knock her unconscious.  Gates now plots to fake Ellen’s suicide. Instead, tipped off by a friend at the club, Mike hurries to Gate’s mansion. As Gates has already left, Mike questions Tommy about Ellen. The oily chauffeur denies she was ever at the house, quietly concealing Ellen’s purse before Mike can discover it.  Mercifully, Raven, having arrived without detection, has witnessed this moment and, realizing Ellen is in grave danger, boldly breaks into the estate and rescues her. Knocking Tommy down a flight of stairs, Raven reasons Gates has gone back to his nightclub. With Ellen in tow, Raven intends to storm the club and confront Gates. Meanwhile, having regained consciousness, Tommy telephones the club and tips Gates off.

Thus, Raven and Ellen are confronted by bodyguards and the police as they enter the club. Again, Raven takes Ellen hostage as he flees. She furtively drops her monogrammed playing cards as a trail of ‘breadcrumbs’ for the police to follow. Recognizing these clues, Mike aids in the manhunt. Again, the police corner the couple at the rail yards but elect to stake out the scene until dawn. Meanwhile, hold up in a box car, Raven quietly lets his defenses slip. He shares with Ellen his flawed childhood – orphaned and raised by an abusive aunt who regularly beat him. One day, something snapped and Raven killed her in self-defense; a crime for which the juvenile was sent to reform school where he was abused by the other children. Ellen informs Raven that the formula he was hired to steal for Gates is a toxin being sold to the Japanese. Appealing to his sense of patriotism, Ellen implores Raven to extract a signed confession from Gates for selling chemical weaponry to the enemy. Raven agrees, and Ellen helps him slip through the dragnet. Regrettably, old habits die hard and Raven guns down a cop who tries to arrest him. Making his way to Nitro Chemical, Raven arrives just as the company is performing a routine ‘gas attack’ drill; their gas masks obscuring their faces.

Amidst this organized chaos, Tommy spots Raven and gives chase. Rather skillfully, Raven knocks Tommy out and, disguising himself in Tommy's security guard’s uniform, he ambushes Gates at gunpoint, ordering to be taken to Nitro’s President, Alvin Brewster (Tully Marshall), the mastermind behind this international espionage. Barricading himself in the penthouse office with Brewster and Gates, Raven coerces his captors into signing a confession. As the police descend upon Nitro’s offices, the elderly Brewster succumbs to a heart attack while attempting to subdue Raven. In his own feeble escape, Gates is gunned down by Raven. Now, Mike, lowered on scaffolding, exchanges gunfire with Raven, fatally wounding him. Raven passes on the opportunity to kill Mike, as he sees Ellen helping the detective. He lives just long enough to be assured by Ellen that she did not turn him in. Thus, what was first presented to us as an unrepentant killer is redeemed, not only in Ellen’s eyes, but in the hearts and minds of the audience, moments before the final fade out.

This Gun for Hire is slickly packaged, and, in hindsight, ably scripted to make Alan Ladd a star. Maltz and Burnett’s screenplay bears very little resemblance to Greene’s novel. This was cause for some consternation. The resultant picture, although an immediate runaway hit for Paramount, incurred Greene’s great displeasure; also, ironically, Maltz’s, who had fought the process of emasculating Greene’s original for the sake of a Hollywood-ized yarn. In later years, the co-author would lament his involvement with this ‘creaky melodrama’. “It doesn’t hold up at all.” Immediately following the picture’s debut, New York critic, Bosley Crowthers was ‘over the moon’ in his praise for Ladd’s performance, “…not since Jimmy Cagney massaged Mae Clarke's face with a grapefruit has a grim desperado gunned his way into cinema ranks with such violence as does Mr. Ladd in this fast and exciting melodrama…he's a pretty-boy killer who likes his work...really an actor to watch…he has something to live up to—or live down.” In retrospect, This Gun for Hire remains a watered down/glammed up version of Graham Greene’s gritty novel. Its success must rest squarely on the chemistry between the sultry Veronica Lake and coolly sinister Alan Ladd. While much of the movie’s narrative relies heavily on their formidably bittersweet harmony, the last act, riddled in cliché, utterly deprives this otherwise rather potent cocktail of its climactic thrills and is tragically malnourished. 

As a noir-styled thriller, and, at an evenly paced 81 min., This Gun for Hire has Tuttle’s direction to recommend it. This helps to counterbalance the schmaltz and peril thrown in tandem at the screen in Maltz and Burnett’s mostly ineffectual screenplay. What sticks is pure box office gold, and, as so much of it does, most will not mind the soft-sell respites that frequently afflict the plot and put a real halt to the excitement otherwise generated by Ladd and Lake. I adore Robert Preston, but he is sincerely wasted in this thankless part – too butch for his own good, and not nearly tough enough to make him the noble ‘good guy’ who could win Ellen’s fickle heart in the end. Even though Preston’s Mike, arguably, gets to walk off with the girl as Ladd’s lad begins to settle to room temperature, Mike knows – as we do – Lake’s luscious lovely is taking him ‘second best’.  The real tragedy here is Ladd is the villain of this piece…well, sort of…a killer with the proverbial heart of gold? Now, that is one for the noir books. And Ladd pulls off Raven as the proverbial ‘nice guy’ who just made a few wrong turns along the road of life, working against type and lowering his expectations as the brute. It all works, I suppose, and, in the end, we are left with Lake and Ladd – a match made in heaven…or some such place, destined to become Paramount’s ‘it’ couple for at least a few movies thereafter. That the studio only placed them twice more in memorable film fare is unforgivable. Ladd had the bigger post-Lake career. Although they did crop up twice, in cameo, in two all-star musical revues, playing themselves (or, at least, to their ‘type’ manufactured and trademarked by the studio) Paramount never entirely capitalized on their proverbial ‘good thing.’ This Gun for Hire may be an unprepossessing story. But Lake and Ladd elevate it to ‘A-list’ drama. Good stuff, here. Very good stuff indeed…the stuff that dreams, ostensibly, are made of.

This Gun for Hire was promised to us back in February. Its delayed arrival on Blu-ray was presumably to give Universal – the custodians of all pre-fifties Paramount catalog – enough time to produce a new hi-def master; the other, deemed not up to snuff for Shout!’s Select label. The results herein are mostly satisfying, showing off John F. Seitz’s B&W cinematography to its very best advantage…well, almost. I cannot help but think contrast is just a tad weaker than it should be. Uni’s DVD release from 2002 sported a much darker image without appearing to have had its contrast artificially boosted. On this Blu-ray, everything falls into a mid-register gray scale. Does it look awful? Well, no. And actually, it does reveal considerably more fine detail throughout. Grain looks indigenous to its source. Without direct comparisons to the DVD, this looks solid and will surely NOT disappoint. The 2.0 DTS mono exhibits predictably modest depth while David Buttolph score sounds fresh and exciting. We get a new commentary by Alan K. Rode and Steve Mitchell, brimming in anecdotes and factoid info; a great listen. Tragically, that is it, except for a theatrical trailer and photo gallery. Personally, and for the current asking price, I sincerely expected more goodies from Shout!’s ‘Select’ line. Otherwise, and, bottom line: highly recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1