Souvenirs of Death

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.

Souvenirs of Death (1948)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely interesting short about how automatic weapons used by Germans during WW2 made their way back to America and into the hands of the underworld. Apparently this was a big problem back in the day and this documentary short, narration from the gun's point of view, does a great job at showing the issues of gun control decades before it became a real issue. *Directed by Crane Wilbur who would go on to director It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

*The IMDb lists another director but the credits have Wilbur listed.

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.

This was just a propaganda piece that our government is famous for to manipulate public opinion.

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.