dual personalities

This Gun for Hire (1942) is the movie that catapulted fourth-billed Alan Ladd into stardom. And for good reason.

Alan Ladd is amazing in this movie. He totally steals it from the star, well-meaning Robert Preston. It is one of those movies where a contract director and a few hack writers and a handful of b-team actors on a limited budget really rise to the occasion. Of course, it is based on a novel (A Gun for Sale) by an A-team novelist, Graham Greene, and that makes a big difference. It also stars the bewitching Veronica Lake who never disappoints.

She and Ladd make a great team. She is tiny, so she doesn’t overwhelm Ladd and he, for once, seems comfortable. (Why later in his career the Hollywood powers-that-be were always teaming him with the likes of Sophia Loren, God only knows.)

Anyway, in this movie, Alan Ladd is believable as the paid killer with a sad past as an abused child and a skewed idea of honor. He is scary too, menacing and slightly psychotic. In the scene where he passes the little crippled girl with the polio braces on the stairway, you really wonder what he’ll do. Only in Shane does Ladd ever again approach what he does in This Gun for Hire. This film is a glimpse at what his career might have been.