Souvenirs of Death

There was Souvenirs of Death , the story of the life of a gun.

I first saw this short film in the mid-1960s on WPIX-Channel 11 in New York, and it had a profound effect on me. I was always respectful of guns, to the degree that I had any contact with them (which was not at all), but this movie really woke me up as a kid to the dangers of irresponsible gun ownership. Seeing it again in the twenty-first century, it still packs a wallop, although obviously the issues have changed as gun ownership -- far beyond the ranks of nostalgia-laden veterans -- has exploded in most parts of the United States.

This episode of John Nesbitt's THE PASSING PARADE, his long-running series of shorts for MGM -- and elsewhere, a radio and a television feature -- tells the story of a Mauser automatic pistol, picked up from the corpse of a dead German officer and taken home as a souvenir by a passing American soldier.

After it shot the family dog, it starts to make its way hither and yon until it falls into the hands of a bleak-eyed Morris Ankrum, a criminal who uses it for its intended purpose -- to make holes in people. Meanwhile, Nesbitt tells the story from the gun's viewpoint, precise, prissy, and totally uncaring about the havoc its owner wreaks. It all ends with a message from J. Edgar Hoover. While stirring music plays, the audience is told that these guns are bad things. The gun has already made it clear that it bears no responsibility for these matters. I agree with its logic.

The title Souvenirs Of Death refers to a German Luger pistol which with the voice of John Nesbitt in this Passing Parade short narrates its life since it left the cold dead hands of a German officer on the field of battle in Europe. Two war souvenirs were extremely popular post World War II among GIs returning home, Japanese Samurai swords and Luger pistols from the Germans.

If the man who took the pistol off the dead German had really wanted to make the weapon safe then it seems that one would remove a firing pin. His young son finds the weapon, finds the ammunition for same (why in the world would you keep that) and the first tragedy of that weapon in civilian life occurs.

Nesbitt narrates how the weapon passes through several owners and even goes across country before it ends up in a final resting place so to speak. We even get J. Edgar Hoover warning about how these souvenirs are becoming popular in the underworld.

I can tell you the National Rifle Association will not approve of this short subject.

"Souvenirs of Death" is a very strange film in that the narrator of the film is a gun! John Nesbitt provides the voice for a German Mauser handgun and it follows the gun's path from a souvenir picked up by an American G.I. serving in the war. He brings it home and the gun ends up killing an innocent dog! Where it goes from there, you'll just have to see for yourself.

The style of the film is unique. The plot, however, is a bit familiar. "Winchester 73" has a lot of similarity as does the old "Hawaii Five-O" episode "Diary of a Gun" (1975). However, despite familiarity, the story is well written and a convincing argument that folks need to be much, much, much more careful if they're going to own a gun. Keep that thing locked up...with no chance anyone else will be able to get to it!

By the way, Barbara Billingsley is in a small role in the film--long before she starred on "Leave it to Beaver" or learned to speak Jive ("Airplane").