The Rifle(s) That Won the West

[dgludwig]

When considering lever-action rifles, all of the western movies that I can remember watching over the years almost always feature Winchesters. I have to assume there's been movies featuring Marlin lever-action rifle/carbines (maybe even the Savage Model 1899/99). Anybody know which movie(s) do? The Wild Bunch maybe (I think this movie might have featured Model 1911 Colt pistols and Winchester Model 97 shotguns, but I haven't viewed it in decades)?

[Husqvarna]

www.imfdb.com

will probably answer all your questions
there is a savage in Badlands the great Terrance Mallick movie, but that is not a western

[bn12gg]

Winchester S x S shotgun.

.02. David.

[taylorce1]

Joe Kidd, Robert Duvall had a Savage 1899 Take Down with telescopic sight. When Clint Eastwood used it for the first time, I had to chuckle with the expression he had looking through the scope for the first time.

Silverado, Danny Glover used Henry lever action rifles.

Valdez Is Coming, Burt Lancaster used a double barrel shotgun and a Sharps rifle. I know it's not really in the same as a Marlin, Winchester, or Savage lever action.

Then there is Quigley Down Under, the Sharps rifle used was the real star of the movie.

I found this web site you might like.

[eastbank]

my favorite rifle movie was and is WINCHESTER 73. no weird guns, but one of the best. mr myopic.

[dgludwig]

No Marlin levers? Odd to me. I know the west was "won" by the turn of the century, but, still, there must have been more than a few Marlins riding the range during these times that Hollywood could have addressed. Of course, there was always Annie Oakley...

[Hawg]

Most of the rifles featured in westerns, especially older westerns from 1860 and up were Winchester 1892's.

[dgludwig]

Many cowboys, ranchers and pioneers did like rifles/carbines that accommodated the same cartridges that their revolvers did; the Model 1892 Winchester being a good example.

[Old Stony]

If my mind isn't playing tricks on me again, I seem to remember Charles Bronson carrying a 99 Savage in Breakheart Pass, and ending up with a bad guy's Marlin later on.

[dgludwig]

Wouldn't you know: the bad guy had the Marlin.

[Jim Watson]

Main thing that won the west was US Army Trapdoors and Army surplus in the hands of settlers. Winchesters were expensive.

[Mike Irwin]

"If my mind isn't playing tricks on me again, I seem to remember Charles Bronson carrying a 99 Savage in Breakheart Pass..."

Breakheart Pass is one of my favorite "bad" movies.

Not 100% certain, but I'm about 95% certain that Bronson's character in the movie doesn't even touch a rifle.

It is certainly set many years before the Savage 95/99 was commercially available.

The Savage has been in quite a few movies...

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Savage_99

[Buckeye!]

Several Bonanza episodes. I remember Marlins being used ...

[TnTnTn]

Nice Winchester 1886 and Remington model 8 in Ride the High Country.
Also Unforgiven featured a number of nice firearms.
Death Hunt with Charles Bronson was another firearms rich movie.

[Mike Irwin]

Death Hunt is one of the movies that did feature the Savage 99.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

In The Naked Spur, with James Stewart, Millard Mitchel, who played Hi Spade across from Stewart in Winchester '73, is carrying a Marlin.


Here is a photo of Jeff Corey in the original True Grit holding a Henry. That has to be an original, the movie was made before the replicas were being produced.



In The Man From Laramie, another James Stewart movie, Aline MacMahon is holding a Henry too.


Just to be clear, the phrase 'The Gun That Won The West' was an marketing slogan dreamed up by Winchester.

[Driftwood Johnson]

my favorite rifle movie was and is WINCHESTER 73. no weird guns, but one of the best. mr myopic.

No weird guns? How about during the shooting contest in Dodge City a Winchester Model 1892 with the for end clearly removed to resemble a Henry? And twice during that movie an actor is holding what is clearly a Model 1873, but claims it is a Henry.

[joe45c]

Driftwood, i saw "Man from Larimie" just the other day and noticed that she had a Henry with her on her buckboard. I also saw another old movie that they had to use a original Henry in. The movie was "Arizona", 1940 with Jean Arthur and William Holden. She gave him a Henry when he went on a cattle drive.

[Scorch]

For sure our impression of the firearms used in the "Old West" was influenced by Hollywood. They used what the prop department brought them, and they used Bannerman to supply them apparently. Most are Winchester rifles and Colt revolvers, primarily because those were still commercially available during the "golden age of westerns" in the 1950s and 1960s. You will probably never see a Whitney-Kennedy or a Bullard or a Sharps-Borchardt in any scene featuring a rifle, you will likely see Winchesters. Just as in westerns you will never see Merwin & Hulbert revolvers, Iver Johnsons, US Cycle Works, Remington 1875s, S&W #2 or #3 revolvers (unless they are replicas), simply because they are hard to come by and no one wants to damage a $4000 rifle, they would rather total out a $400 rifle. I did catch the new Magnificent Seven movie the other day, and I was impressed that they had Winchester 1876 and Spencer rifles, open-top 1872 Colts, Greener shotguns, and several very unusual firearms (for a movie).

[eastbank]

drift wood, yes i have seen that in many western movies, they took the forend wood off to past it off as a earier winchester. or with soldiers carrying trapdoors and 73 colt revolvers in civil war time lines. eastbank.

[SansSouci]

They used lever actions because the M-14 hadn't yet been invented.

[doofus47]

Wasn't there a Spencer in Unforgiven

[reinert]

Mike,

Funny you should mention the movie, "Death Hunt." I was just visiting with a buddy this past weekend about the real story that the movie was based on. My buddy is an outfitter, and packs a .303 Savage, M99, in his saddle scabbard when working with his clients. Open sighted, he says it's the best and slickest thing for use on a saddle. Yup, Bronson had one in the movie.

A Savage M99 was the last center-fire rifle Albert Johnson owned (if that was indeed his name). It was in 30-30 cal. The R.C.M.P. pursued this man for a month and a half, in some of the most rugged country in North America back in the early 1930's (NW Terr. and the Yukon). The Mounties finally had to submit to using a plane to help bring the fugitive to bay, ending in his death in a real shoot-out. That manhunt is still considered the most famous (if infamous) in all Canadian history. Bronson did a good job playing Albert Johnson in the movie (IMO).

Albert Johnson was known as "The Mad Trapper of Rat River." It truly is an unbelievable story of a man who was the epitome of human survival and stamina. Besides being wanted for murder, he was considered a lunatic, and I'm sure that worked in his favor as he outfoxed the Mounties for a month and a half in the dead of winter in 1932.

If you don't know the story, this is pretty good;

www.dyingwords.net/tag/albert-johnson

[roashooter]

They used lever actions because the M-14 hadn't yet been invented.

really????

[Old Stony]

Sorry...I got the titles of Breakheart pass and Death Hunt mixed up. Death Hunt was the movie I was thinking of with the Savage 99. Great movie..