REMEBERING KERRS

[chuck brunner]

The quintessential west coast playroom.... I have owned and sold some of Parkers finest from Mr. Alex.... Lets see some pics. Rich and friends? I have had over a dozen guns that were sold thru Kerr Sport Shop and all of them were something special.

[chuck brunner]

A view from the inside

[chuck brunner]

Hollywood reached its Golden Age from 1930-1960, when such luminescent stars as Clarke Gable, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Bing Crosby became icons. Many of these Golden Age cinema stars, including Gable , Grant and Cooper were noted shooters. But who did they buy their skeet and upland guns from?

[chuck brunner]

KERRS
John Barrymore and Clarke shooting Skeet in West Hollywood.

[chuck brunner]

Some famous movie stars frequented Abercrombie & Fitch, of course, but since A&F did not have a West Coast presence (at least not until later, when they opened a branch in San Francisco), and many stars more or less made their homes in Hollywood, there had to be some place for them to frequent that could sate their piscatorial and hunting desires.

This is where the Kerr Sport Shop of 9584 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills stepped in. A fixture among the Hollywood elite anglers and hunters for decades, it was truly the Gun and Tackle Shop to the Stars. Founded by transplanted Chicagoan Alexander H. Kerr (b. 1913) in the mid-1930s, this full service tackle shop sold a full line of firearms and fishing tackle as well as other sporting goods, including sporting clothes -- an important line in a city so image-conscience. By 1937 The Coast magazine was calling it that "super sporting establishment in Beverly Hills."

Alex Kerr was certainly a sport himself, best noted for his shooting skills. In 1941, he won his first World Championship, then spent the war years as a Navy gunnery instructor. In 1946 he won the Sports Afield trophy for All-Gauge skeet shooting champion. A year later he became one of the founders of the National Skeet Shooting Association. He was a 16-time world champion in this sport.

Although the shop was perhaps best known for its custom gunsmithing department, where the rich and famous could have their high-end double barrel shotguns tailored to their needs or purchase Remington-special Kerr Skeet Guns, it did also sell a lot of good fishing tackle, too. Studio executive and film director William R. Lasky recalled in his autobiography Go Tell it on the Mountain about one particular incident where "we drove to Kerr's Sport Shop in Beverly Hills, and he bought us the best of everything: hundred-dollar Canadian quilt-lined fishing jackets, Arctic goose-down sleeping bags, European trout creels, and so many trout flies…"

And there were stars. The Oakland Tribune for 15 January 1942 wrote that Alex Kerr was the "blond expert from Beverly Hills, and instructor to many of the men and women from Hollywood's motion picture colony…" Preview Magazine in 1958 declared that Oscar-winner Gary Cooper often "visits Alex Kerr's sports shop, browses in the gun department, always hefts a pair of matched Purdy's and murmurs, 'Wish I could afford these,' and has coffee with Alex in the coffee shop across the road." Robert Stack was a frequent patron, and an exceptionally good shot with a gun, too. He referred to Kerr often in his own autobiography Shooting Straight.

Kerr spent a lot of his free time collecting and documenting the history of skeet shooting. The Long Beach Press-Telegram could declare on 30 January 1972 that "Kerr has probably assembled probably what is one of the most complete collections of equipment used from the earliest days of shotgun competitions." He was also a conservationist who in 1963 was named by the California Outdoor Writers the "Sportsman of the Year."

[chuck brunner]

The man himself on left with Ken Barnes on a California dove shoot in 1980

[Dean Romig]

Thanks for a great thread Chuck. Excellent pics and information!





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[Trap3]

10 or 12 years ago his daughter had a San Francisco Glass Co. auctioned off his collection of Target balls. Was able to win some examples from Alex Kerr`s collection...

Trap3

[charlie cleveland]

this man surely was a friend of shotgunners...only to have lived in this mans shadow....charlie

[Researcher]

The California Team at the 1936 Skeet Championships --

California Team 1936.jpeg

My 1953 vintage 12-gauge Model 21 Skeet Gun went to Kerr's according to the Cody letter. I have a 1950 vintage 20-gauge Superposed that went to Stanley Andrews Sporting Goods in San Diego, but must have passed through Kerr's at some point in time --

Kerr's Beverly Hills, Calif recoil pad.jpg