Krag rifles as movie props

[Hardcast416taylor]

Just home from the hospital (again) for a heart cath I watched some old movies on TCM channel. The flics `Gunga Din` and the original `King Kong` both from the 1930`s had Krag rifles being used by both good guys and bad guys in `Din` and the boat crew men in `Kong`. I never knew that an issue Krag round could take down a Triceratops as it did in `Kong`? Wonder what ever happened to all those Krags?Robert

[smokeywolf]

I've known a few people in the movie industry who were gun nuts. Jack Palance had a bit of a collection. Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney's right hand technology and logistics man had an extensive collection. Sammy Davis, Jerry Lewis, Glen Ford and quite a few others had small to moderate collections. Charlton Heston had a fabulous collection.

A lot of the studio brass would take some very impressive bits of movie memorabilia with them when they retired. I know of one that took a fully restored 1950s camera dolly home to put in his parlor when he retired.

[CASTER OF LEAD]

Not the movies, but have you ever noticed that Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heros also carried a Krag rifle.

182574

PB

I know nothing........,commandant Klink! Gotta love Hogan's Hero's. - CASTER

[wcp4570]

I've noticed Sgt Schultz has a krag as well. Hogan's heros is one of my old time favorite movies.

wcp4570

[Multigunner]

Not sure but I think The guy who played Schultz also carried a Krag in a movie where he played a German border guard.

Many Krag Motion picture prop rifles were sold off through the CMP around 10-15 years ago. Most had bores trashed by lack of cleaning after use of highly corrosive black powder blank cartridges. A few were in not too bad condition.

I have seen images posted of a film used Krag in excellent condition, it was presented to a studio big wig or investor long ago and was in his estate. Don't remember much about it but I think it had a brass plaque on the butt stock.

A number of the film used props sold off by the CMP were those used in the TV mini series "Roughriders".

[Multigunner]

PS
Many Krag chambers have been found reamed out to accept a .50 Cadet rifle blank cartridge, for use in firing salutes at military funerals.

[Outpost75]

5 in 1 movie blank will chamber, fire and extract in a Krag without modification.

Magazine feeding is more than a bit iffy, but inserting a filler block in the magwell helps.

[6mm win lee]

Here is another list of Krags in the Movies

http://www.jouster.com/forums/showthread.php?51947-Krags-in-the-movies

---------------------------------

McLintock! (1963)
http://free-classic-movies.com/movie...tock/index.php

Hillbilliy Blitzkrieg (1942) Snuffy Smith is in the Army.
http://free-classic-movies.com/movie...rieg/index.php

The Real Glory, 1939
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9XUY84QB5s

Shoulder Arms (1918) with Charlie Chaplin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9-UGJm6NRM

The Big Parade with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree (1925)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNRkdqkiFZk (Stop at 32 seconds.)

PeaceOnEarth (1939) Hugh Harman cartoon
http://www.archive.org/details/PeaceOnEarth1939

The Lost World (1925)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJaXxY3citM

Boots and Saddles (1937) Gene Autry

Gunga Din

Farewell to Arms (1932)

For Whom the Bell Tolls

The Wind and the Lion

55 Days at Peking

To Kill a Mockingbird

King Kong 1933

The Fighting SeaBees 1944

The Sun Shines Bright (1953) John Ford, Director
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-V6tyyp4o

Unidentified Three Stooges short

Hogan's Heroes

Green Fire

Death Hunt staring Charles Bronson

Rough Riders

[Multigunner]

"5 in 1 movie blank will chamber, fire and extract in a Krag without modification."
Military schools and Veterans organizations got the .50 Cadet blank free of charge.

[madsenshooter]

I think I recall it once being rumored that the MGM collection contained an unaltered 1896 Krag Cadet rifle. If there was any truth to the rumor, it hasn't turned up yet! They were basically model 1892 rifles, with cleaning rod under the barrel and without sling swivels. Come to think of it, MGM couldn't have had one, unless it walked out Springfield Armory's back door, cause they went back to Springfield to be turned into regular service rifles! At that time they were closely counting as it was about time to pay the royalties.

[smokeywolf]

Always wanted to get into the vault. It was right next to the water tower. I worked at MGM/Turner/Lorimar/Columbia-Sony Pictures Entertainment Studios (same studio) for over 20 years. If I remember right, the vault was emptied of all or nearly all the guns in the mid to late '80s.

[.455 Webley]

A Krag turns up in the hands of the Japanese in "The Fighting Seabees", the Duke takes one away and is even using it for a little while.

[Multigunner]

When these movies were made obtaining any large number of non US military rifles would have been very difficult and expensive. The long Krag rifles were much the same length as the long rifles they doubled for.
Mausers left over from WW1 weren't so hard to find, but the Japanese weren't losers in that war so they didn't have to sell off huge numbers of rifles to pay reparations. The Japanese rifles that were sold during WW1 were sold to governments as training rifles and to equip allies like the Arab troops that fought the Turks. Any Arisakas around back then were unlikely to show up in large numbers on the open market and finding the proper blanks would add to the expense.
Even the surplus Hook Safety rifles were still in military stores in Finland and Russia.

The only place you'd find large numbers of Arisaka rifles in the Americas would be Mexico which bought many Arisakas rebarreled to 7X57.

[junkbug]

John Banner was well known to have refused to use a German rifle in his portrayal of Sgt. Shultz. He was a Vienna native, Jewish, and fled Austria as a young adult around the time it was incorporated into the Third Reich. I remember noticing he carried a Krag, even a child.

[1Hawkeye]

In the movie the wind and the lion that is what the U.S. Marines' used along with win 97 trench guns and 1895 colt-browning potato diggers on bicycle wheel mounts.

[GOPHER SLAYER]

I well remember when MGM sold off their prop department and it was in the 1960s not the 1980s. MGM was a short distance from Martin Redding/s Gun Shop in Culver city and he bought many of the guns. He had racks of rifles that looked like Winchester 1892 carbines but were in fact copies made in Spain and called El Tigre. Some were of fair quality but many were not. I had one that was not. I don't remember seeing any Krags but there could have been some. I had no interest in them then and still don't. Many of the other props tuned up at swap meets, sold by hippies, remember them. They traveled around the country in old VW vans making a dollar where ever they could.

[fgd135]

1939 "Beau Geste" with Gary Cooper. Final scenes at Fort Zinderneuf, Krags in abundance.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

How's about "The Blue Max" where the WW I Germans are armed with WW II No.4 Lee Enfields?

[Shiloh]

In "To Kill a Mockingbird" Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, Shoots a rabid dog with a Krag.

Shiloh

[Hardcast416taylor]

HMMMMMMM! Nobody has bit on my wonderings about how a Krag round could dispatch a stegasaurous in the original `Kong` movie?Robert

[Multigunner]

Lucky hit.
IIRC didn't the Stegosaurus continue breathing and showing some signs of life as they walked around it ?

Some of the longer quadruped dinosaurs had two brains working in series to coordinate movement of front legs , back legs and tail. Even a headshot might not kill one but any disruption of the signals between brains would certainly render them immobile for some time.

The Krag round is no wimp, it could penetrate fifty 3/4 inch pine boards or the equal amount of packed earth in sand bags.
The 220 gr FMJ round nose bullet had more penetration than the 150 gr spire point FMJ of the .30-06 ball cartridge or the 174 gr .303 MkVII.

[Shiloh]

HMMMMMMM! Nobody has bit on my wonderings about how a Krag round could dispatch a stegasaurous in the original `Kong` movie?Robert

Shot placement??

Shiloh

[Shiloh]

The Krag round is no wimp, it could penetrate fifty 3/4 inch pine boards or the equal amount of packed earth in sand bags.
The 220 gr FMJ round nose bullet had more penetration than the 150 gr spire point FMJ of the .30-06 ball cartridge or the 174 gr .303 MkVII.

Loaded up in a stout action, Ruger #3 for instance the Krag round has much better performance. I enjoy the heck out of mine.

SHiloh

[iuvenal]

There's a Krag that appears in the West World TV as a decoration in a train car. They tend to play fast and loose with the time period of "old west" guns they use, but I guess it takes place in the future so....?

[Hardcast416taylor]

I was up late last week and watching old `Perry Mason` TV shows. In several different shows that were set in a house and a well-to-do large home there is a full length Krag rifle in a large frame with original bayonet hanging over the fireplaces.Robert

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I suppose being Humphrey Bogart was some excuse for having a 20ga LC Smith sleeved to 28ga. I also remember an article by someone recalling an evening's conversation with a very polite, pleasant man in a duck-hunting camp, and only after a while realising that he was Clark Gable.

I remember those Krags in "Gunga Din", and wondering whether they were chosen as the nearest thing to Lee-Enfields before military surplus imports became common, or just cheap. With some of the other movies listed above, I would think the latter.


I've known a few people in the movie industry who were gun nuts. Jack Palance had a bit of a collection. Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney's right hand technology and logistics man had an extensive collection. Sammy Davis, Jerry Lewis, Glen Ford and quite a few others had small to moderate collections. Charlton Heston had a fabulous collection.

A lot of the studio brass would take some very impressive bits of movie memorabilia with them when they retired. I know of one that took a fully restored 1950s camera dolly home to put in his parlor when he retired.

[Multigunner]

I've seen nice images of at least two presentation grade Krag rifles from the old days. One was the former prop rifle I mentioned earlier and the other was a rifle presented to a cicilian who had done some great favors for the state national guard or militia so their armorer put together a super fine example of the then obsolete Krag stocking it in some very finely figured wood. That rifle was found long after the owners death in a closet in his offices, never fired since being presented to him.

In the early seventies I read an article on a find in a factory building that had been padlocked during the depression and only re opened after a number of court cases were settled.
In one of the offices they found several crates, opening them they found dozens of pristine Krag rifles. Some research revealed that a man with access to the building had been involved with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of anti facist fighters during the Spanish civil war. The guns were part of an arms smuggling operation.
That would have been a good story to turn into a republic pictures afternoon serial.