After THIS GUN FOR HIRE, Paramount realized they had a popular star and leading man in Alan Ladd. Good looking, and with camera angles and tricks to disguise his short height, he was soon a leading star at the studio. But like so many other good ideas, Paramounts production heads thought only of image in making Ladd movies. In THIS GUN FOR HIRE he had been Raven, a cold-blooded killer made that way by a crummy childhood (culminating in his self-defense killing of his aunt),and years of reformatories and prisons. Is it any wonder that he sells his killing services for whoever pays the best price...but wait, he does like little kids, does like cats, is willing to consider replacing the blouse of an obnoxious maid he had a fight with, and he does start a type of patriotic reform with the aid of understanding (and pretty) Veronica Lake. It takes too late, but he dies on the side of the angels (aiding the U.S.).
THIS GUN FOR HIRE set up a formula that would be used again and again, until Ladd would try to vary it with westerns (like his classic SHANE), and even classic novels (THE GREAT GATSBY). He was a tough guy, who gradually learns that there are certain things that are so bad or evil they transcend stuff you are willing to accept as part of doing illegal business (i.e., breaking someone's head is tolerable, but setting up a death camp or marching soldiers on a death march is not).
This theory of "degrees of evil" had been used in the 1930s in gangster films (and would be used again in film noir gangster films in the 1940s and 1950s). The idea is that the criminals should not be lumped together so easily. It was okay for Jimmy Cagney (as Rocky in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) to shoot down two "business associates", because Rocky was fair and even handed with loot - just insisting that his loot was left his loot, while those two associates (one is Humphrey Bogart as a crooked lawyer) were just willing to cheat Rocky of his loot. Similarly, with Edward G. Robinson in THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE, he is a cultured, urbane, and helpful man doing research into crime, who ends up running Bogart's mob - but Bogart is a nasty customer who tries to do all his enemies in (he tries to freeze Robinson to death in a fur vault). Bogart (when he too rises to stardom in HIGH SIERRA) is an intelligent and loyal lieutenant to good old Donald McBride, but McBride's other lieutenant is Barton MacLane, who is a corrupt ex-cop (so he's totally bad). See - degrees of evil here. It must have caused consternation with the Hays Office and the Breen Office to follow these illogical, logical sequences mirroring thought or philosophy in screenplays.
The villains in THIS GUN FOR HIRE (Tully Marshall, Laird Cregar, and Marc Lawrence) are going to sell poison gas to Japan after Pearl Harbor, so they are traitors (well paid ones too - Marshall has some secret Japanese medal for his services to Hirohito). Their destruction by Ladd is welcomed by the post-Pearl Harbor audience watching the film (although Ladd also takes a pot shot at Robert Preston, who is not a traitor but a detective, and does kill a cop).
LUCKY JORDAN was a logical extension of the plot of THIS GUN FOR HIRE. Ladd, as Jordan, is the surly head of a mob, and is drafted. He soon is in the stockade for insubordination, but flees to return to his mob. He really is at home in his urban street jungle. But he finds his second in command (the superb Sheldon Leonard) has pulled a "Moriarty" (i.e. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON), in that he is aiding the Axis (Miles Mander) in spying and working against the U.S. Ladd has learned enough about the Axis to be opposed to this, and Leonard (in any case) is not really interested in returning the mob's leadership to Ladd. So the audience watches Ladd's patriotism rise enough to overcome (or blend in with) his surly gangster mentality. Eventually he is the personification of FDR's famous comment about backing Trujillo in the Dominican Republic during the war. An aide told FDR that Trujillo was a real s.o.b. "Yes," said the President somberly, "BUT HE'S OUR S.O.B.!"
With Helen Walker as the love interest, but she's not as good in blending with Ladd as Lake is. So the film is only an "8" out of "10". But still entertaining, despite it's weird morality point of view.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE set up a formula that would be used again and again, until Ladd would try to vary it with westerns (like his classic SHANE), and even classic novels (THE GREAT GATSBY). He was a tough guy, who gradually learns that there are certain things that are so bad or evil they transcend stuff you are willing to accept as part of doing illegal business (i.e., breaking someone's head is tolerable, but setting up a death camp or marching soldiers on a death march is not).
This theory of "degrees of evil" had been used in the 1930s in gangster films (and would be used again in film noir gangster films in the 1940s and 1950s). The idea is that the criminals should not be lumped together so easily. It was okay for Jimmy Cagney (as Rocky in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES) to shoot down two "business associates", because Rocky was fair and even handed with loot - just insisting that his loot was left his loot, while those two associates (one is Humphrey Bogart as a crooked lawyer) were just willing to cheat Rocky of his loot. Similarly, with Edward G. Robinson in THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE, he is a cultured, urbane, and helpful man doing research into crime, who ends up running Bogart's mob - but Bogart is a nasty customer who tries to do all his enemies in (he tries to freeze Robinson to death in a fur vault). Bogart (when he too rises to stardom in HIGH SIERRA) is an intelligent and loyal lieutenant to good old Donald McBride, but McBride's other lieutenant is Barton MacLane, who is a corrupt ex-cop (so he's totally bad). See - degrees of evil here. It must have caused consternation with the Hays Office and the Breen Office to follow these illogical, logical sequences mirroring thought or philosophy in screenplays.
The villains in THIS GUN FOR HIRE (Tully Marshall, Laird Cregar, and Marc Lawrence) are going to sell poison gas to Japan after Pearl Harbor, so they are traitors (well paid ones too - Marshall has some secret Japanese medal for his services to Hirohito). Their destruction by Ladd is welcomed by the post-Pearl Harbor audience watching the film (although Ladd also takes a pot shot at Robert Preston, who is not a traitor but a detective, and does kill a cop).
LUCKY JORDAN was a logical extension of the plot of THIS GUN FOR HIRE. Ladd, as Jordan, is the surly head of a mob, and is drafted. He soon is in the stockade for insubordination, but flees to return to his mob. He really is at home in his urban street jungle. But he finds his second in command (the superb Sheldon Leonard) has pulled a "Moriarty" (i.e. SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON), in that he is aiding the Axis (Miles Mander) in spying and working against the U.S. Ladd has learned enough about the Axis to be opposed to this, and Leonard (in any case) is not really interested in returning the mob's leadership to Ladd. So the audience watches Ladd's patriotism rise enough to overcome (or blend in with) his surly gangster mentality. Eventually he is the personification of FDR's famous comment about backing Trujillo in the Dominican Republic during the war. An aide told FDR that Trujillo was a real s.o.b. "Yes," said the President somberly, "BUT HE'S OUR S.O.B.!"
With Helen Walker as the love interest, but she's not as good in blending with Ladd as Lake is. So the film is only an "8" out of "10". But still entertaining, despite it's weird morality point of view.