Clark Gable & Carole Lombard Hunting.

[Kevin McCormack]

Hello Jim - great to see you post and hear from you again!

Like most or all famous guns (Bo Whoop, the Czar's Parker, Teddy Roosevelt's Fox, etc.), lots of the details of ownership and ultimate disposition get lost in the "fog of war", so to speak. I can offer the following clarifications for the record:

In a phone conversation with Robert Stack in January of 2001 while researching southern California duck clubs, he told me that when he won the Junior Skeet Shooting Championship, the award gun was a 20 gauge LC Smith Skeet Special. Long a fan of Parker Guns, he was put in touch with the "right people" in Ilion, and arranged to trade the LC Smith award gun against an order for a BHE 28 ga. Parker skeet gun with all options - ST, VR, etc. This gun was purchased by Bob Peterson at the auction of Stack's estate and is now part of the Peterson Collection display at the NRA National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, VA.

The DHE .410 is even a more interesting story. The gun department of Kerr's Sporting Goods in Beverly Hills was for many years run by a man named Gerry Knight, who was instrumental in schmoozing with Hollywood stars and celebrities in the sale of high-end guns of all makes and kinds. In Bob Stack's words, Gerry "really made Kerr's so far as the sale of wonderful guns was concerned." Around 1940-41, Kerr's ordered and was shipped a DHE .410 for inventory from the Remington works at Ilion.

In a phone conversation with Gerry Knight (c. 2002), he confessed that he developed an obsession with owning the little gun, and began putting away significant sums of money every payday towards the purchase of it, which with his not-insignificant employee discount, looked like it could one day become a reality. He said lots of people looked at the gun; most men derided it as "pretty much of a useless toy"; while most women thought it looked "cute." The net result was that it sat in the rack for weeks without anyone buying it.

One fateful day, Bob Stack came in and browsed the gunrack, saw the little jewel. and told Gerry, "that's about the sweetest little Parker I've ever seen - I'll take it!" Being the dutiful and productive employee that he was, Gerry wrote it up!

So far as I know, Bob Peterson bought all 3 of Bob Stack's Parkers at the Littlejohn auction - the DHE .410, the BHE 28 gauge skeet gun, and the 20 all-optioned DHE with AH-grade wood special ordered from Remington after the purchase of the BHE 28. The BHE 28 and the DHE 20 remain on display in the Peterson Collection at the NRA Museum; I don't know where or with whom the DHE .410 wound up.