What kind of rifle did Shaw use at the end of The Manchurian Candidate (1962)?
Surely you’ve seen this: Talk:The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film) - Wikipedia
I would bet on the Mannlicher Carcano Lee Harvey Oswald mail order special if it weren’t for the fact that Oswald allegedly used that gun a year (or thereabouts) later than the movie.
In short, no help beyond curiosity. Good trivia!
(Fixed your link.)
All I see on that page is someone asking the same question. Unless I missed something?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Carcano IRL. Are they take-down rifles, as in the film?
Sorry for the crummy link. I just passed it along on the outside chance you hadn’t tried it, and I saw nothing in it beyond the same question.
There are wiki pages on the Carcano and Mannlicher rifles but nothing (that I saw) to suggest any connection to the movie. The timing of JFK and the movie make it highly inlikely that the Oswald piece is a candidate.
I tried googling images, but the only take-down rifles I’m finding are custom jobs or Arisakas. (The Arisaka has a straight bolt, and IIRC the film rifle has a turn-down bolt.) (I’m also finding AR-7s, of course.)
Any luck finding the answer? I’m still curious.
Not meant as a hijack to your thread, but I have a similar curiosity about the actual manufacturer of the knife used in the old Alan Ladd movie The Iron Mistress (1952) and I have heard reasonable claims about Randall and Cooper, but nothing I would take as gospel.
Probably a similar situation with the rifle, but I haven’t even heard any speculation.
Have you seen The Parallax View (1974)?
what makes you think the rifle or the knife is an actual manufactured rifle? there is every chance they are one off props made to the directors or art directors instructions loosely based on some real commercial model.
(not a prop maker but in a relationship with one…)
This may not be the right answer since you are asking specifically about the movie. However, the book from 1959 refers to it only as a “Soviet issue rifle.”
ETA: By the way, did you mean what actual rifle played the “role” in the movie, or did you mean what type of rifle was being depicted?
Very reasonable question and likely to be the case in both movies. However, something I read a good while back makes me believe that Alan Ladd himself commissioned some notable knifemaker to do the Bowie. Now whether it was Randall or Cooper or somebody else, I have yet to hear anything definitive.
One thing’s for sure, though. The half dozen or so movies and shows of that era each had a different take on what the knife looked like, and all you have to do is Google “Bowie knife” to see the broad range of shapes, lengths, and designs people use and call it a Bowie, or even an Iron Mistress.