Gun Crazy 1950 

Since he was a child, Bart Tare has always loved guns. After leaving the army, his friends take him to a carnival, where he meets the perfect girl, Annie, a sharp-shooting sideshow performer who loves guns as much as he. The two run off and marry, but Annie isn't happy with their financial situation, so at her behest the couple begins a crosscountry string of daring robberies. Gun Crazy (1950) (AKA Deadly Is the Female) is a film noir spun from a short story written by MacKinlay Kantor and published in 1940 in The Saturday Evening Post. The screenplay was credited to Kantor and Millard Kaufman; however, Kaufman was a front for Hollywood Ten outcast Dalton Trumbo, who considerably reworked the story into a doomed love affair. The drama features Peggy Cummins, John Dall, and others .

 Bart Tare (John Dall) is a ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns--they make him feel good inside. The drama opens with Tare, age 14, being grilled by a judge because he had been arrested for breaking and entering and stealing a gun. In flashbacks his friends say that while its true that Tare loves guns, he would never kill anything. They tell the judge the number of times he's refused to kill animals. Nevertheless the judge sends him to reform school.

 The bank heist sequence was shot entirely in one long take in Montrose, California, with no one besides the principal actors and people inside the bank alerted to the operation. This one-take shot included the sequence of driving into town to the bank, distracting and then knocking out a patrolman, and making the get-away. This was done by simulating the interior of a sedan with a stretch Cadillac with room enough to mount the camera and a jockey's saddle for the cameraman on a greased two-by-twelve board in the back. Lewis kept it fresh by having the actors improvise their dialogue.