Word: gunness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...warning gun was sounded and the royal procession steamed out to the reviewing grounds. In the van rode Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin on the little steamer Patricia. Not as a Prime Minister but as an Elder Brother of Trinity House, he wore a uniform very much like that of a British admiral. Trinity House is the ancient organization still responsible for British lighthouses and pilotage. At all royal naval reviews the Elder Brethren's yacht has the right to pilot the royal yacht down the line...
Past such colorful names as Skipjack, Puffin, Foxhound, Esk, Fearless, Wild Swanand Escapade the royal flotilla passed, with each ship, swathed in flags, banging out a 21-gun salute, her crew hand in hand, lining the rails...
...preachment against war, They Gave Him A Gun would be more persuasive if it did not permit the impression that experience in the trenches may have improved Fred about as much as it weakened Jimmy. As melodrama, it would be more effective if Director W. S. Van Dyke had avoided more of the cliches that tend to attach themselves to all pictures involving 1) soldiers, 2) gangsters, 3) emotional triangles. To balance its defects, They Gave Him A Gun, no masterpiece but a fast-moving, adult screen play, has the ad vantage of highly proficient performances by its three principals...
They Gave Him A Gun (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). "I live for my country and work for it . . .'' says Jimmy (Franchot Tone) in this picture, "but when they order me to travel 3.000 miles to be a butcher, I quit." This is just after he has fainted from disgust during a 1917 bayonet drill and is being revived by his buddy, Fred (Spencer Tracy). At the front, equipped with a high-powered rifle and good eyesight, Jimmy's attitude changes. When luck puts him in a church steeple with a perfect chance to pick off five members...
Message of They Gave Him A Gun, adapted from William Joyce Cowan's novel, is that war breeds gangsters. This not particularly startling thesis is elaborately worked out in connection with Rose Duffy (Gladys George), the hospital nurse who falls in love with Fred but marries Jimmy out of sympathy. When Fred encounters the young couple in the U. S. after the Armistice. Jimmy is running a protective association that gives him ample opportunity to keep up his target practice. Fred tells Rose and Rose tells the police. By this time, Jimmy's slightly Freudian affinity for guns...