Clark Gable's A-1 Special

[Kevin McCormack]

Ottis Odom began collecting Parker Guns in the late 1950's but by the late 1960's - early 1970's began specializing in Parker .410s and 28 gauges. The last accurate count I was privvy to in 1990 was that he owned around 60 .410s and over 100 28 gauges, in all grades and configurations. Some time back, I forget the exact year, two burglars brandishing pistols broke into his home while his wife was home alone, tied her to a chair, then gagged her and ransacked the house for money and valuables. They had no knowledge of Odom's extensive Parker collection or its whereabouts. The theives left, police were called, and no harm was done to his wife. The incident so unnerved Odom and his wife that very shortly thereafter, he began liquidating his entire collection, saying that he could not bear to think of what they would have done to his wife had they knew about his collection and its whereabouts at the time of the robbery.

The Clark Gable A-1 Special has an interesting story all its own. Dick Baldwin, a longtime Remington employee and author of the great shooting chronicle, "The Road to Yesterday", told of the sale of this gun. His father worked for Remington Arms as a salesman and was manninig the Remington booth at the New York Sportsman's show in January of 1940 on the same weekend as the premier of "Gone With the Wind" was presented in New York. All the major stars of the movie were there, along with other Hollywood "sports" like Gary Cooper, Eugene Pallete (who played Friar Tuck in the original movie "Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn), Thomas Mitchell, Andy Devine, etc., many of whom owned and shot Parker Guns. Clark Gable came in with the guys and collectively they oogled the Remington display, which of course had quite a few Parker Guns to handle and examine. When Gable began to gush over the A-1 Special, he told Dick's father, Clifford, that he would love to own one but would not want to wait the six months or so to have one built, whereupon Clifford Baldwin told him he could have the gun he held in his hands if he so desired. Gable, delighted, made sure the gun fit him, then agreed to buy it and, gentleman that he was, waited until the Sportsman's Show closed to pick it up. Clifford Baldwin said the encounter with Gable and his purchase of the A-1 was a "triple-header", as he put it: He met the biggest male lead in Hollywood at the time, got 2 free tickets to "Gone With the Wind", and sold the only Parker A-1 Special he ever sold in his life.