fascist or communist collectivism or , for that matter , unrestrained capitalist greed . 3
Feature films intended for home front consumption often featured messages of continuity . Citizens could , for the most part , carry on with their normal lives . For example , the feature film This Gun for Hire was released in May 1942 , directed by Frank Tuttle . Principal photography was completed on December 6 , 1941 , from a script by Albert Maltz and W . R . Burnett from the 1936 novel by Graham Greene , A Gun for Sale ( US Title This Gun for Hire ). Paramount bought the rights for $ 12,000 in 1941 . The main character in the film served his country by serving his own quest for revenge , with only a very small change from novel to script in the way he carried it out .
The script shifted the setting from Europe to the US west coast . In the novel , the murderous and dark main character , appropriately named Raven , has a cleft palate that is a physical mark of his psychological twistedness resulting from a painful upbringing . The script changed the physical mark to a damaged wrist from childhood abuse . In the film , Alan Ladd as professional killer Phillip Raven carries out a hit on a blackmailer and recovers a stolen chemical formula , and thereafter collects his $ 1,000 fee from effeminate fifth-columnist , peppermint nibbler , and nightclub owner Willard Gates ( Laird Cregar ). Raven soon discovers that Gates double-crossed him by paying his fee in marked bills . Gates reports the stolen money to Michael Crane ( Robert Preston ), a Los Angeles detective visiting 3
Peter C . Rollins , “ Frank Capra ’ s Why We Fight Film Series and Our American Dream ,” Journal of American Culture , 19 ( Winter 1996 ): 81-86 . On American wartime film production , see M . Todd Bennett , One World , Big Screen : Hollywood , the Allies , and World War II ( Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press , 2012 ); and Robert L . McLaughlin and Sally E . Parry , We ’ ll Always Have the Movies : American Cinema During World War II ( Lexington : University Press of Kentucky , 2006 ).
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