Guns have been in motion pictures since the start. ‘Rust’ is only the latest to have a gun death
LA TimesIn the iconic final scene of 1903’s “The Great Train Robbery,” an actor points and fires into the camera, directly at the audience. The widow of the man who was killed was kept on the studio payroll for years.” Five movie extras were shot and wounded in the spring of 1923 — not on the set of the 1923 Lon Chaney film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” where they’d been working, but outside a downtown casting office whose slick practices had already been investigated by The Times. John Tyke had just gotten out of jail — again — and “he was pesterin’ me and wantin’ to fight.” Tyke swore to beat Ward to death or cut out his heart with his knife. Outside the drugstore at Sunset and Gower, Tyke followed Ward and “called me ‘yellow’ and other dirty names.” Ward went to his car and picked up his “picture work” gun and said he started to drive off to a gig at another studio. Only in the movie script versions a hundred-plus years afterwards — including the musical “Oliver!” — is Sikes killed by another man’s hand.