User Reviews

While not really an anti-war movie, this does give the message that not every man should be forced to go onto the front lines and be given a gun to shoot to kill what mankind refers to as their enemy. Set in World War I, this focuses on two pals (Franchot Tone and Spencer Tracy), opposites at first, who find their lives switching gears and going in opposite directions. Tracy is presumed to be killed in battle, causing Tone to marry Gladys George (the woman Tracy loved), and when Spencer pulls an Enoch Adams, all of their worlds are turned upside down, leading to Tracy facing a murder rap and the previously peace-loving Tone turning to a life of crime when he realizes the truth about Spencer and wife George.

"Memorize your lines and don't trip over the furniture", two-time Oscar Winning Spencer Tracy once said, and almost fifty years after his last film and death, his advice still holds up, his acting as fresh today as it was when he first stepped in front of movie cameras in 1930. Even in mediocre films, he added a quality to it that made it seem much better. Also remarkable is the fact that as great as he is, he doesn't make his co-stars look like amateurs. His method only added to his own character's development, and as a result, even an average actor could look like a pro simply because of the company they were keeping. In the case of "They Gave Him a Gun", this is obvious with both stars-Franchot Tone and Gladys George, both capable performers, who seemed to pick up on what secret he had, making even their own characters all the more fascinating.

A lot of what Tracy does is simple reacting, not acting, and with Tone, it is obvious that this is a "trading places" plot, with bad boy Tracy reforming somewhat while Tone goes from clean-cut all-American to crook with nurse Gladys George torn between them. She's one of those rare leading ladies who in the 1930's had a brief success, that throaty voice and hard presence covering up a heart as soft as oatmeal and the realization that no matter how much pain her characters had been through, she hadn't forgotten how to be human. Tone had the physical presence of an actor who could seem to be bland, but he was paired with co-stars of expressive features and great dramatic training that his appearance was revealed to hide passions that with weaker co-stars might have never revealed. As adept in screwball comedy as he was in drama, Tone's performance here is very nuanced, and ultimately, it is his character's fate that wraps up a complex plot and brings on great sympathy. Even though both Tracy and Tone got guns, it is Tone's character that the bullet-ridden titles (opening the film like a machine gun) are referring to. With these three, the film ends up with a great touch of class that with less co-stars would have ranked it among MGM's "B" crime dramas or been part of their "Crime Does Not Pay" series of shorts.

***SPOILERS*** All too, in real life as well as in the movies, familiar story that happens to many young men who are put in a war zone with a gun, or rifle, in their hands. The case of young and innocent, in never handling or firing a gun, Jimmy Davis, Franchot Tone, has been repeated thousands of times over the centuries when men, like Jimmy Davis, are forced to take up arms for their country.

Jimmy who at first wanted to be kicked out of the US Army but was encouraged to stay, by being belted in the mouth, by his good friend Fred P. Willis, Spencer Tracy, ended up on the front lines in France. With Jimmy's unit pinned down by a German machine gun nest he single handedly put it out of commission picking off some half dozen German soldiers from the safety of a nearby church steeple. It was when Jimmy gunned down the last surviving German, who raised his arms in surrender, that an artillery shell hit the steeple seriously wounding him.

Recovering from his wounds at an Army hospital Jimmy fell in love with US Army volunteer nurse Rose Duffy, Gladys George. Rose was really in love with Jimmy's good friend the happy go lucky Fred despite his obnoxious antics towards her. It's when Fred was lost during the fighting on the Western Front that Rose, thinking that he was killed, fell in love and later married Jimmy. When Fred unexpectedly showed up in the French town where Jimmy, now fully recovered from his wounds, was stationed at things got very sticky for both him and Rose who had already accepted Jimmy's proposal of marriage to her!

With WWI over and Jimmy marrying Rose left Fred, who's still in love with her, a bitter and resentful young man. It was almost by accident that Fred ran into Jimmy on the streets of New York City and discovered to his shock and surprise that he completely changed from the meek and non-violent person that he knew before he was sent to war on the European Western Front. Smug and sure of himself, and his ability to shoot a gun, Jimmy had become a top mobster in New York City's underworld! Not only that but as Fred later found out his wife Rose had no idea what Jimmy was really involved in with Jimmy telling her that he works as a law abiding and inoffensive insurance adjuster.

Jimmy's life of crime came full circle when Rose, after she found out about his secret life, ratted him out to the police to prevent him from executing a "Valentine Day" like massacre, with his gang members dressed as cops, of his rival mobsters. While on trial Jimmy came to his senses and admitted his guilt willing to face the music and then, after his three year sentence is up, get his life back together.

***SPOILER ALERT*** Hearing rumors from fellow convicts that Rose and his best friend Fred were having an affair behind his back Jimmy broke out of prison ending up a fugitive from the law. It's at Fred's circus, where he works as both manger and barker, that Jimmy in seeing that Rose as well as Fred were true to him that he, like at his trial, had a sudden change of heart. But the thought of going back to prison, with at least another ten years added on to his sentence, was just too much for Jimmy! It was then that Jimmy decided to end it all by letting the police who by then tracked him down do the job, that he himself didn't have the heart to do, for him!

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.

A large field gun is fired at the audience. Then a machine gun punches out the movie title: RAT-A-TAT-TAT! This is a nice beginning that leads into a passable first part. It is 1917 and the USA is at war with Germany. There are montages of factories making various wartime weapons, like cannon shells and military rifles. A rifle stock rotates on a lathe while a gun barrel is honed.

The first active part of the movie shows a typical military boot camp. We meet Fred Willis (Spencer Tracy), a circus owner, and Jim Davis (Franchot Tone), a rather shy country type who shuns weapons. NCO Meadowlark (Edgar Dearing) is the drill instructor. Thirteen minutes into the film, our soldiers are on a French battlefield, of which the action is impressive and well-staged. A German machine gun nest in a battered church has pinned down an American company. Through the heroics of Jim Davis, who has been thoroughly trained in the use of his rifle, the nest is cleared out, but Jim refuses the surrender of a helpless German soldier who has raised his arms into the air. Jim has become a changed man. Anyway, he is wounded and Rose Duffy (Gladys George) becomes his nurse although she eventually falls in love with Fred by the 30-minute mark. But Fred is sent back into the front, and is later thought to be lost. Meanwhile Jim receives the French "Croix de Guerre," a very high decoration for bravery on the battlefield. Now Jim has fallen in love with Rose. At the 47-minute mark, or more than half-way through, the screen reads 11 November 1918, the end of the Great War. Right after our screen characters are back in the USA.

In the second half, it is the early 1920s, and gangsters are running roughshod over the general public in the big city. Right after a shooting of a mobster in his automobile, Fred and Jim run into each other for the first time since war's end. They exchange information to meet again as Fred learns that Rose and Jim are married. Before the one-hour mark of the movie, we know Jim's terrible secret: He has become a mob hit-man. After he fails to convince Jim to transform his ways, Fred wises up dumbfounded Rose to the situation. Right after, there is an absolutely ludicrous scene. Rose, without any hindrance whatsoever, strolls into a warehouse unnoticed to eavesdrop on her husband who's planning a St. Valentine's Day type of massacre: Hit-men are dressed like policemen. Rose calls up the cops and tips them off. The next scene is Jim's trial and sentencing of three years in prison. Of course Jim will break out of jail, find Rose at Fred's Circus Maximus, where she has a job. Before anything happens, the police will conveniently locate him, and Jim will unfortunately try to escape and suffer the consequences. Fred quips to the policeman Meadowlark, the former drill instructor turned cop, "Why don't you pin a medal on him now, Sgt. Meadowlark? He was your star pupil." Fred and Rose embrace as she sobs . . . THE END.

Spencer Tracy was a fine performer who won back-to-back Oscars for Best Actor for movies made in 1936 and in 1937. Tone is somewhat believable here. But Gladys George at 37 years of age is miscast as a young volunteer nurse supposedly in her early twenties. She delivers her lines with little conviction or empathy. The montages, of high quality, help the first half of the movie, but the second half script is so-so and the outcome is very predictable.