1951-03-03 — Page 3

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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1951.

HOLLYWOOD GUNSMITH

WHETHER it's a 16th Century matchlock or a 20th Century rocket

launcher that's wanted, Frederick Dickle can produce it. From his stock of 7,590 guns, Dickle supplies weapons to cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, women who shoot their husbands and husbands who shoot their wives-but only for Hollywood movies.

Dickie, Al, bas_been running the privately-owned Stembridge. Gun. Room at Paramount for 25 years, renting weapons to all the studios. And if he doesn't have what they want, he makes them. A 17th Century gun is often a modern rifto in disguise.

Dickle also makes wax bullets and blanks that provide smoke.

FOR HER ROLE as an enticing hillbilly, actress Mary Murphy is taught how

to clean a musket. The gun is the type usually associated with mountaineers..

'VARIOUS TYPES of firearms, from a tlay derringer to the latest automatic,'are dis- (played by Frederick Dickie for starlet Barbara Knudson, Guns in the Stembridge

REITABLE

collection are never sold. A weapon rents for $2.50 to $75 a day, depending on, demand and amount of "face lifting" Dickle must do on it for a particular ace

[FROM THE MOVIE Tripoli domes this ba [used to defend a fort. Often hünd

How Weapons Get a "Face Lifting" in the Stembridge Gun Room and Special-Effects Bullets Are Made for Use in Hollywood Movies

TOOLING fancy designs on a six-shooter, Dickie changes it from an ordi- -- GANGSTER pictures and westerns, keep the gun room nary gun to a deluxe pistol, similar to those used by famous, westerners. busy making hundreds of blanks and special bullets.

FIRED from à 43-cal, revolver, a wax builles nations againal thick giam prot pellets hit boulders shielding, gund, ters, splattering wax gives impression rei

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