JohnHowardReid Review of They Gave Him a Gun

They Gave Him a Gun (1937)

Interesting more for its background than its players or plot

[6/10 · 14 May 2013]

According to M-G-M publicity, "Spencer Tracy has prevailed upon W.S. Van Dyke to cancel his Eastern vacation and begin immediate filming of They Gave Him a Gun." On the face of it. this would have to be one of the most laughably false publicity pieces that Metro's flacks ever concocted. Tracy regarded "One-Shot Woody" as the worst director on the lot and I can just see him kicking, screaming and sulking in what turned out to be a futile effort to get out of the assignment. But maybe Tracy got wind of the fact that the script was based on a book by William Joyce Cowen. Five years earlier, Mr. Cowen was actually at work at M-G-M directing a movie called Kongo which easily grasps the title of the most sadistic film a mainstream U.S.A. studio ever made. And it's amazing to think that the mainstream studio involved in production and release of Kongo was indeed M-G-M, the home of glamour, escapism and rigid GOP conformity. How this one actually got into the production line-up, let alone was actually made and released, beggars the imagination. It wasn't as if Louis B. Mayer owed someone a favor and gave him the run of the lot (as happened with The Picture of Dorian Gray). So maybe Tracy knew something we don't know and did actually ask for Van Dyke in order to get in and out of They Gave Him a Gun super-fast. But even Van Dyke couldn't band-aid the soggy script. Admittedly, he was not helped by Tracy, Franchot Tone and Gladys George who say their lines without making the slightest attempts at engaging audience sympathy. Still, Woody did do something interesting. Assisted by ace photographer Harold Rosson, he shot an entire scene through a wire grill with interesting variations of focus. And there are also two or three great Slavko Vorkapich montages.