Birdwatcher, I'm kinda curious as to your source that Alan Ladd did not like guns?? I never met him but I knew some people who worked in various pictures with him where there were lots of guns and shooting and never heard any of those people say he disliked guns. Just curious.
L.W.
If it’s on Wiki it must be true......
Scroll down to “Production”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film)
The reference source website link provided by Wikifrom TurnerClassic Movies no longer works, here’s another that does not reference Ladd in that context but gives other interesting trivia....
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0046303/triviaBirdwatcher, thank you for those links re the production of
Shane. Here is some "trivia" that was told to me by an older screen writer with whom I became friends. He was under contract to Paramount when
Shane was being filmed. He told me that Stevens shot over 1,000,000 feet of 35 mm film. That's enough for about eight standard length films of the time period. Stevens shot
everything! Over and over and over.
My friend told me that the reasoning for the editing and reediting problems came because Stevens had so much film it was very difficult to organize the film in a workable sequence, therefore that was
part of the $2,000,000 cost overrun. When Paramount finally premiered the film in Santa Barbara, at the end people were walking out of the theater laughing in derision at the overly melodramatic movie. They brought the picture back to the studio, held a conference about what to do. After all, $2,000,000 in 1951 was one helluva lot more then than today and Paramount was going to take a real bath.
They fired Stevens and his film editor and hired another (uncredited) producer and film editor. After viewing the movie they'd premiered and reading the book, the producer said, "Why don't we edit it from the point-of-view of the boy, who's telling the story in the novel?" He disliked a whole lot of the dialogue in the film so he called in one of the great "script doctors," Jack Sher, to "doctor" the dialogue. So he and his film editor edited the film to become what eventually was shown in the theaters.
I must say I question strongly that they had to do 119 takes of Ladd demonstrating his gun handling prowess to Joey, shooting in the corral, even though Stevens was well known for never being satisfied with a scene when he shot it.. It was far too
non-complicated a bit of action for that to have happened. As for the Colt revolver used for the shooting scenes -- and many gunfighter movies even today where single action revolvers are used -- the revolvers are tricked out
double action revolvers so the actor can "shoot real fast." Just pull the trigger as fast as you can. Very, very few people can shoot single action Colts rapidly that fast, therefore the double action revolvers.
Eyes shut when shooting means Ladd disliked guns? I don't buy that simply because when all that black powder smoke is blowing out, virtually anyone would blink. As for "not pointing" his revolver at his target in the saloon, that is more a viewpoiint from the camera angle. Now the final shooting of the guy upstairs, Ladd did not aim "up" enough for a real bullet to have connected with the bad guy. I have an idea that Stevens did not catch that when it was being filmed or he would have done another take. Ladd was in many movies previous to
Shane where he shot other actors and had no problem aiming at the actor. That's just my guess.
I do not take everything for gospel in IMDB. They make mistakes, too. They've made a couple of mistakes in listing my writing credits, and I've noticed a few with other writers with whom I'm well acquainted. IMDB is good, but as with anything of that nature. it is not perfect.
Thanks again for the link.
L.W.
