I've noticed the same thing in movies.

When doing a historical presentation I'd certainly hope the known details would be correct so it would add credibility to the whole program. One word to the defense of the program, it's not unusual for capture weapons to be pressed into service.

 

There was one program back in the early '60's I used to watch all time as a kid.

It starred Vic Morrow and was called Combat. For us kids it was pretty real including all the weapons used during WWII.

I could't wait to watch the weekly episodes.

 

There is a local channel that is still showing "Combat" But I have to get up at 4:30 to watch it, they show the old show "12 O clock high".

I like the old move Enemy At The Gates so when I saw one of my favorite gun shops had a Mosin Nagant 91/30 sniper with P/U scope & just had to buy it.
They also show it in the newer movie Stalingrad too.

 

HarryS,

I just watched and recorded "Blue Max" with George Peppard. It was made in 1965 and when I saw it back then I noted the British troops had No.1 MkIII Enfield rifles and the Germans had No.4 Mk1 British rifles first made in 1932! Not bad for a WWI scenario....

I often see Japanese troops armed with Mauser Gew M1898 rifles in WWII war movies. I should be a consultant for movie directors so they could get it right.

Webley

 

Webley, got you. How about you be the consultant on the guns and examine them all to see they work right. I'll be the consultant on the young ladies!!!

Actually the movie Enemy at the Gates (my favorite mil history flick) looked to be weapon correct.

 

Worked in Hollywood and on Movie guns for a bit.... oh the stories. Worked on Painless.

 

The Prop house Armory's are where the set dressers get their weapons for movies if the agent ordering weapons is not conversant, they take what is available in sufficient numbers to handle the shooting script.
and the Writers do NOT usually give the detail data of the weapons written in to the scenes, so no guidance to the procurer.

"Garbage in = Garbage out" applies to almost every thing.

If you look at the "B" western of the early 20th century it shows really well with anachronistic use.

Best Regards,
Chev. William

 

Good production people use armorers/consultants/ technical advisers. Given the crude they churn out in the past decade.. they're cutting corners. If you watch Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan and Pacific, they put in the effort to do it better. Dale Dye was normally used as a technical adviser and boot camp trainer for the actors. I believe he maybe semi-retired.

The movie gun shops that exist now are NOT the same as the ones that used to be.

 

depends on where it was filmed. There used to be a very large movie gun shop in LA, I know I used to get called to go over there.

In England they have a huge amount of WWII equipment including rubber guns. Problem is production values. It's fairly common to not pay attention to historical inaccuracies when they're simply churning out product.

Sid's was a ball, I worked on the hand held GE Minigun... (predator/T2). because of the amount of Class III weapons where I normally worked, we used to get production people and actors over to take a look at things.

The sad fact is, a lot of studio's used to maintain armories. MGM's was one of the finest. It was sold off in 71 when MGM was broken up and sold off. I did buy one of the cut down Trapdoor Springfield (45/70) in the sell off.

 

Rojkoh,
You are so very true that the Movie Studios are not the same as they were:
Example: Paramount in Hollywood is now renting stages as "four wall rentals' and has closed almost all production shooting support shops, like Drapery, Sign and Staff, Backdrop, Mill, Costume, Camera, Props, etc.
They still have a Grip and a Set Lighting Departments and Editing on lot.
A BIG change from the 1930s and 1940s when Everything was available on Lot for a Production Company to 'rent'.
Even the old original DC power system for 'safe' stage lighting has been torn out and all replaced by either installed AC power or requires use of Portable Generator Sets and/or Rectifiers when DC is called for, which is no longer very often.
Even the old "Arc Lights" are almost gone as the people who understand them are retired and the up coming new people do not recognize the particular usefulness of them for particular set lighting effects.
Then Computer Graphic Techniques have improved 'dramatically' and most new 'special effects' intensive scripts no longer depend on live actors for actual production film footage, but use them for motion capture to input to the Computers.
This is neither Good nor Bad, just 'evolution' in the Art of making Entertainment.
Even the 'medium' on which the images are 'recorded' and 'distributed' has changed.
the original Nitro cellulose based film changed to less Fire prone 'Safety Film', then to even more stable Mylar bse, and now is moving from digital tape to direct Digital transmission and projection.
Sadly the more modern methods have a much shorter 'storage life' than the 'older technologies' so there is some worry that the modern 'movie' will not be available for viewing in 20 or 30 years, unlike the historical preserved images from the beginning of the 20th Century, which can still be viewed and enjoyed 70 to over a 100 years later.
Best Regards,
Chev. William

 

Don't do many movies.
But the fact remains that the M1 carried by our GI's won the war.
Jim

 

Sgt. Saunders with Thompson, Little John with BAR, Kirby with (M1 I think?), Doc ? Loved Combat, and still do Sgt. York! And Blue Max was a very good movie!

 

Saunders typically carried an M1A1 (Savage) an Combat was often filmed in Benedict Canyon in LA, occasionally on the MGM lot.

 

There's a movie, "6 Days in October" (could be ten, I don't remember that well...) where there's tons of Mosin-Nagants. It is about the Bolshevik revolution and the storming of the Winter Palace. Very accurate depiction, as it was filmed only 10 or 15 years after the actual event. I believe they used actual troops with their issued arms for the scenes. The movie looks like an old time news film, so it has been shown as documentary of the ACTUAL storming of the palace! But it is all a Soviet propaganda film. No fake guns there.

Luisyamaha

 

In Hogan's Heros, Sergeant Schultz carried an American Krag rifle. Unless he handed it to one of the prisoners for a few minutes.

 

Like others, when a kid, watched my share of the TV series Combat......Deserts Rats too. Chuckle, seem to recall in Combat, lots of shooting, but not sure they ever hit anything.

My problem with many movies in the past was not so much the rifles, but the Armor used. Geeee, how many times did I notice a U.S. halftrack being used as German armor, or a M48 tank too. Good example, was the Fonda film "The Battle of the Bulge" back in the 70s. Now, I loved Kelly's Heros, the armor was correct in it.

Here is an oddity. Few weeks ago have the military channel on the TV. Its showing a WWII documentary done by the actor/film director John Huston, that if I remember correctly, won an Oscar for this short documentary done during WWII. Huston was in Italy in WWII and using actual combat footage, put together what was called "The Battle of San Peidro". I've seen this movie/documentary a number of times over the years. Germans held the town. Anyway, in one scene towards end of it, the Germans had withdrawn and G.I.s are sweeping the town. There is a very brief scene (maybe 10 seconds) of 3 G.I.s carefully moving around a corner, rubble everywhere. G.I. leading the other two is carrying a scoped 1903 Springfield, other two carry Garands. The scoped 1903 draws my attention to the scene and I look closely. Maybe the actual combat film footage had been reversed. But darn if I wasn't looking at a left handed scoped 1903. Trust me when I say the G.I with the 1903 was carrying his rifle like a left hander would (muzzle pointing towards right, left hand on the trigger) and the G.I.s with Garands held their rifles like a right hander would (muzzles pointing towards left and right hands on the trigger......need I mention the bolt handle on the 1903 was on the left side too, and yea, the Garand bolt handle was on the right side of the action. Like I said, an oddity. There were no left handed Springfield scoped rifles, or any Springfields for that matter, made for a left hander.

 

It was called "Rat Patrol". A friend of mine's father worked on it and he had one of the GPW's with the 1919A4 mount in it with a Dewatt 1919 mounted. We drove it around one day in Arab costumes, the local PD did not appreciate it.

If you watch the battle of the bulge, love the fact that the producers loved to talk about all the efforts made to secure WWII armor. The M-24 Chaffee came in later in the war to replace the M5. Bridge at Remagen was decent about these things.

Flipping footage is an old habit in Hollywood. If you watch "Soldier" with Kurt Russell you see a scene where he comes out of the water with the GE Minigun. It didn't happen like that, the kid that reset the GE reset it wrong to factory spec and the thing pushed Kurt into the water. So they reversed the footage. I know, I worked on that GE more than once including setting it back up so it could be fired hand held.

03A4s were common in WWII both in the ETO and the Pacific.

Funniest thing I ever did was take some Hollywood types out to the range with a cyclic Para-Fal and inserted a mag, folded the stock and burned off 20 rounds. A friend held me from moving backwards and I did actually hit the side of a mountain to let them know why doing things like this didn't work in real life.

The response was; "Yea but it's sexy". Sigh.....

The folks that Spielberg and Tom Hanks use for their productions have been good about historical accuracy, including the rubber weapons (which included rubber MG 42s). They had to build the German armor based on a T-34/85 (the Tigers) and a few others for various rolls including the German Armored car. Kelly's Heroes was accurate because it was filming in Yugoslavia and the US gave the Yugo's a LOT of Sherman's and various vehicles after the war. The Tigers in that one were also modified T-34s dressed up to look like the Pzkw VI

 

Tigers in Kelley's Heroes were modified T-34s. They filled the roll quite well.

 

read the last line. They were actually T-34/85s.

 

The Tigers in Kelly's Heroes were actually modified T-34s with a boob job and some makeup. They filled the roll quite well.

 

Quaint... "boob job and some make up"? ever seen the difference between the Mark VI and a T-35/85? I've seen the work for the converted tanks for Saving Pvt Ryan and several before that since some of them came out of SoCal.

 

I think you misunderstood the boob job remark. It wasn't in reference to the work involved in turning a T-34/85 into a replica of a Tiger. The people involved did an outstanding job there. It was instead supposed to be directed at the differences between a T34/85 and earlier models of the T-34. Sarcasm is particularly bad when it's poorly written lol.
In other words a T-34/85 is just an updated model of the earlier versions.

 

Thanks for the clarification, I did wonder.

I'm aware of the history of the T-34. If you want the most accurate film representations of the T-34, watch "Cross of Iron".

In SoCal, there's a large compound with a lot of military equipment set up mainly to work with movies. Got to know them in the 70's when I was restoring a 44 GPW. We both had jeeps working on MASH (until the teamsters broke the rear body mount on mine)... Since he knew what I worked in at the time, set them up with some blank firing 191A4s. They did modify several vehicles for "RED DAWN" the original movie.. "Ahnold" keeps his Patton there and comes out to crush cars from time to time.

Couldn't do blanks firing cylic weapons the same way anymore, they're tougher on those kinds of things which is why a lot of those things are filmed overseas now, including Band of Brothers and Saving Pvt Ryan. English have large amounts of WWII equipment including a lot of WII Military weapons. They've also taken up the manufacturing of "rubber guns"... lots of fun with those.

 

PS trickiest movie gun to work with? This one.