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Kevin McCormack
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 06:08 pm |
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Dave Noreen wrote: I spent quite a bit of time in the Andy Devine wing of the museum at Kingman, Arizona, before the Las Vegas show in January 2003. They had a lot of pictures and memorabilia of Andy at Grand Junction, but nothing on the old American Sportsman episode. 160frame and I have discussed it many times. It seems to be buried deep enoungh at ABC that us mortals will never see it again. It likely aired 20 years before I owned a VCR!
The story of the "lost" American Sportsman episodes is indeed a bitter pill with me. When ABC made available the video tapes of the series ("Upland Birds", "Waterfowl", "Big Game", and "Trophy Fishing") in the late 1970's, the two most noteworthy segments missing from the "Upland Birds" collection were Andy Devine shooting woodcock in LA with his GHE (DHE?) .410 and Robert Stack shooting driven grouse in Scotland with Jackie Stewart, the ex-Grand Prix multi World Champion, also a shotgun nut.
I "boycotted" purchasing the tape for myself as a result as, for me, these were the two best episodes of all time (as opposed to the "trout pond" episode featuring Bing Crosby and Phil Harris shooting pheasants in Amish country near Lancaster PA). Years later, through a friend, I was introduced to one of her cousins who happened to be a production assistant to Roone Arledge at ABC Sports. I asked her to approach Roone about making the 2" master tapes available for a fee for copying the excerpted episodes not made available on the commercial videotapes sold by ABC. She said she would pursue it with Arledge and get back to me. I was ready to pay up to $500 per episode, a fortune for me in those days, for the one-time right to copy.
Much to my delight, I received a phone call from her a few weeks later, telling me that she had relayed my request to Arledge, and that he had indeed valued my interest, but that ABC as a policy would not make the 2" masters available for select copying for fear of copyright infringement through unauthorized private copying and sale of the previously unpublished materials. The ABC lawyers were polite but firm on this point, and Arledge reiterated that I was not the first who had approached him about this and other selected episodes that never made the final edit before commercial production of the episode tapes had begun.
So once again, a twist of fate deprived us of two of the most exhilarating episodes in filmed shooting sports, not to mention the opportunity to observe two great actors behaving naturally, far from Tinseltown. Oh, well, I tried.....KBM
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Greg Connors
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 06:39 pm |
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I'm curious about Ian Ziering, the actor who was on "Beverly Hills 90210" for years.
He was/is an active shooter (and probably a conservative)and I wonder if that fact has kept him from appearing in any more series or films since.
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Kevin McCormack
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 06:43 pm |
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Eric Eis wrote: Dave from what I remember from that auction both the 28 and the 410 were Stack's guns, one unfired the Remington gave to him the other just about mint (yes I did bid on one) both guns were bought by the same man that I understood later to be a friend of Stack's. Eric
Eric et al:
Bob Stack owned, as he referred to them, "3 good Parkers": the DHE .410, which he purchased on a whim across the counter at Kerr's around 1940, the BHE 28 ga., which he actually negotiated with Remington to have built after trading in his 1st-place prize for winning the 1937 Junior Skeet Championship in St. Louis (Eightbore Bill, document me here if necessary) - the prize being an LC Smith 16 ga.!, and the DHE 20 ga. with A-grade factory wood, special-ordered from Remington around 1941. This information came straight from the man himself, whom I met and corresponded with on a variety of subjects from late 2000 until his death in May 2003.
Other interesting trivia re: 1940's-era Parker guns: In December 1939, the East Coast debut of the movie "Gone With The Wind" opened in New York City. At the same time, the National Sportsman's Show was being held at Madison Square Garden (think The Shot Show in Dallas for comparison of its day). Needless to say all of the red-blooded stars from the movie hung out during the off-hours at the Sportsman's show.
Clifford Baldwin, father of still-living trap maven Dick Balwin ("The Road to Yesterday") was a top Remington salesman in charge of the floor display for Remington at the show. The night before the show closed, Clark Gable came in and admired the 12-ga. A-1 Special on display there and asked if he could buy it. What would you have said? According to Dick Baldwin, he was so taken with it that he subsequently purchased a knockout DHE 20 gauge for Carole Lombard, who was killed in a War Bonds Tour airplane crash on the CA-NV border shortly after the gun was delivered.
The Clark Gable A-1 was left to Gary Cooper when Gable died in 1960. Cooper reportedly left it to Andy Devine when Cooper died in 1961. Andy Devine (died in 1977) then left the gun to Roy Rogers, who died in 1998. I believe this gun to be one of the ones sold by Littlejohn shortly thereafter.
The Carole Lombard DHE 20 ga. never resurfaced after her death. Grief stricken beyond belief, a popular but never documented rumor has it that Gable took the gun out shooting one last time in the high desert near where she died, then flung it over the rim of a canyon hundreds of feet deep. For what it's worth........KBM
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Kevin McCormack
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 06:56 pm |
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Fred Preston wrote: What kind of shotgun(s) did Hemmingway have? I know he had at least one.
Hemingway was, like yours truly, an "equal opportunity" owner of fine sporting arms. An obscure auction house near Elmira NY sold his late-1940's Beretta 12 ga. S-3 O/U a couple of years ago, complete with India ink-stenciled leg-o-mutton case for around $18K. There was an absolutely wonderful black and white photograph that went with the gun that in my estimation was worth as much as the gun and case combined. It showed Hemingway seated on a metal folding chair with the gun cradled in his lap, with bird boys standing on either side of him and a pile of doves in front. The picture was labeled something like, "Huevas Negras, Habana, Cuba, 1947."
Another famous picture of Hemingway shows him and his young son taking a break from pheasant and duck shooting in Sun Valley, ID, in the early 1950's. In that photo he is shown with a Grade I Belgian Browning Superposed 12 ga. 28". And of course he owned at least one Model 21 Winchester with which, sadly enough, he took his own life in the early 1960's. I don't know but would be willing to be he owned a Parker Gun at one time or another during his all-to-brief life. KBM
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Greg Connors
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 07:11 pm |
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| Thanks for the good information Kevin.
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Fred Preston
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Posted: Thu Jan 26th, 2006 08:59 pm |
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| Thanks Kevin.
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C Roger Giles
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 12:29 am |
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Kevin, great stories and please stay in the story telling mode as they are sooo interesting.
Roger
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Fred Hazard
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 12:56 am |
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I've read that Hemingway chose a British best to fire his final, fatal shot -- I recall Boss but am not sure as to maker. The gun reportedly was destroyed by his family.
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Dean Romig
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 01:25 am |
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The history and anecdotal tidbits of shooting lore that KBM posts here are a wealth of knowledge and I certainly hope he has this stuff written down someplace. Whenever I think of the word "sage" both he and Eightbore come to mind... not as being old and wizened but as the ageless shaman who knows and tells the old stories so that these stories will be remembered and retold in time.
Great stuff Kevin!
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Christopher S. Lien
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 11:41 am |
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Bob V,
I have followed this thread closely and have also been digging into the L.A. Beverly Hills mystery.
Working from the bottom up, I just finished with some material from the early 20's... Nothing as yet matching the previously mentioned initials of "WGL" or "WLG", or the gold inlayed "C" you referenced. I'll be looking through later research up into 1930's next...
I did find a great 12x18 photo print of the Los Angeles Gun Club dated 1918... The image shows several shooters on the gun line, with many affluent spectators in the gallery... On the back is a list that mentions shooters in attendance such as Bruner, Packard, Teeple, Groat, Patton, Pachmayr and many others including a fella named Fred Kimble who also posted a score... For some reason this last guy, Kimble, sounds very familiar?... 
Still finding some interesting old photos and early Parker paper I forgot I had...
Keep searching Bob, you are not alone...
Best, Chris .Last edited on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 11:47 am by Christopher S. Lien
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Danny McHugh
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 01:16 pm |
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| What I have read is that he took his life with his favorite shotgun (boss).
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Don Kaas
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 03:47 pm |
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| As regards Ernest Hemingway, he was a member of my gun club from the late 1940's until his death. He first visited the Club as a guest of socialite and hunter Winston Guest along with his 3rd wife, war correspondent, Martha Gelhorn and his son, Patrick in the fall of 1940 (it must have been Ladies Day). He was living in Cuba at the time. Being our only Nobel prize winning member, I have taken an interest in his time at the Club and inquired of our older members who knew him. Though some 50 years on, the bulk of the recollection has to do with his alcohol consumption fueling a tendency to bragadoccio and ill temper and one monumental early morning fistfight in the Clubhouse entrance hall with fellow member, Ed Taws. No one seems to remember what gun he shot for live birds. Searching the Club records for the era I can find no instance where EH either won or placed at an event. The stories surrounding another writer beloved of outdoors types, Robert Ruark ,who though never a member was a guest a number of times in the '50s also features alcohol as a major subject. One of our current members met him at the bar at "21" one Friday night and invited him down to Philadelphia to shoot early the next morning. He drank from a flask on the drive down... The difference by all accounts between the two men was, while both clearly drank too much for their own good, Ruark became "happy drunk" a good deal sooner than EH became a "mean" one. Last edited on Fri Jan 27th, 2006 03:53 pm by Don Kaas
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Frank DAmico
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 04:13 pm |
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This from an article in Cigar Aficionado magazine (courtesy of Google):
"Ernest Hemingway either had placed the double barrels of a 12-gauge English shotgun in his mouth,  as he once had demonstrated for uneasy friends at his home in Cuba ("Look, this is how I'm going to do it.... The palate is the softest part of the head."); or he had put both barrels to his brow, just above his dark brown eyes.
However Hemingway had positioned the weapon (which he had bought years before at Abercrombie & Fitch and used for shooting pigeons), when he tripped both triggers early on the morning of July 2, 1961, the result was devastating: blood, brain, bone, teeth, flesh and hair, splattered all over the small, oak-paneled and tile-floored foyer of his home in Ketchum, Idaho. He simply blew away his entire cranial vault. "
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Bob Vilmur
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 05:57 pm |
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Miscellaneous
Regarding the Boss, could be? Had read years ago (and it stuck) that he had used a Winchester 21.
Regarding the Parker with "WLG" or "WGL", this gun was described as bearing markedly more wear than the others. Combined with the explicit inclusion of these three initials vs a persistent tendency in all other descriptions towards vagueness, I'm inclined that "C" is the best clue. And also remember that within the single "C" description the writer connected "C" with "original owner".
A related thought is that the describer of the three initial Parker who included two different letter sequences was going by memory, or trying to be crudely deceptive, or? Quien Sabe?
But the best was "Eightbore Bill". Liked that. Remember years ago suggesting that he do a by-line somewhere like Ed Zern did. Thought the by-line "Exit With Eightbore" fitted well . . . .
Getting back to who the original owner was, maybe its not an actor. Maybe its a director, producer, film company prominent, or someone along that line.
Another question I can't deal with is what is revealed in written description vs. what might be verbally revealed at the auctions - - either formally, or informally. One could speculate that Little John was under instruction not to reveal the owner's name, despite the possibility that if the owner had been prominent, more appeal and value might have been added. Again, quien sabe? We have yet to hear from somebody who was there, or who tracked these auctions through more than written descriptions.
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Bill Murphy
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 07:25 pm |
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| I wonder if the powers that be at Littlejohn's may come clean with the name now that the auction is over. I doubt that EH used a 21. Someone with his knowledge of shotguns would have used a double trigger gun so he could put a spacer between the triggers and fire both barrels. I doubt that Ernies 21s were double trigger guns. If he had owned eight bores, I'm sure he would have used one of them. If a top wad is inserted at the very lip of a 3 1/4 inch eight gauge shell, I'm sure that about 3 1/2 ounces of shot can be squeezed into each shell.
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Danny McHugh
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 08:10 pm |
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This is all I could find about the Boss shotgun!
http://www.timelesshemingway.com/fathersandsons.shtml
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Greg Connors
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 08:21 pm |
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| Bill, I have no doubt that someone of EH's import could have, and would have, used his contacts within the Spanish military to procure some sort of anti-aircraft gun instead of using a standard, albeit fancy, shotgun. For that simple fact it is obvious to me that his 'suicide' was nothing more than a plot orchestrated by the International Canned Goods Association to take him out of the running before Eisenhower could get re-elected. To this day he lives on an island with all of his attended to. He has as neighbors Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean.
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Frank DAmico
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 08:34 pm |
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| I studied Hemingway when I was much younger. Admired his work and many things about his life but there is no excuse for letting his wife walk into something like that. I had a grandfather and an uncle do the same, although with pistols. Both of them were found by their sons, who were devastated. Granted they were in a bad way and I have no problem with a person's decision to end their lives if thats what they choose to do but go do it out in the woods or get yourself lost at sea.
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Don Kaas
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 08:53 pm |
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| Frank, It takes a certain type of high mindedness to pass judgement on Ernest Hemingway. Not everyone can expect a bi-polar,alcoholic Nobel Prize winner who was both physically ill and in the throes of a severe and persistant depressive phase to kill himself politely. Perhaps, he wanted Mary to find him exactly the way she did. Better a Boss than barbituates...
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Frank DAmico
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Posted: Fri Jan 27th, 2006 09:16 pm |
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| I'm sure she was a strong woman.
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