“The Wizard’s” Model 71 Winchester
“The Wizard’s” Model 71 Winchester
Rifle shot by Herb Parsons in the filming of the legendary Western movie “Winchester ‘73” is on display in Cody, Wyoming.
Rifle shot by Herb Parsons in the filming of the legendary Western movie “Winchester ‘73” is on display in Cody, Wyoming.
“The Wizard’s” Model 71 Winchester rifle from the legendary Western movie “Winchester ‘73” is on display in Cody, Wyoming.
For those of us who love spending rainy afternoons watching classic Western movies (and that would probably be all of us), one all-time classic is “Winchester’73” staring Jimmy Stewart. It was released in 1950 by Universal International Pictures and has become a favorite of generations of moviegoers.
In the film Jimmy Stewart plays a cowboy who wins a coveted One-of-One Thousand Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle in a shooting contest in Dodge City. Unfortunately the rifle is stolen from Stewart before he leaves town and the balance of the film revolves around Stewart’s efforts to recover his prized Winchester.
During Stewart’s shooting contest scenes the world-famous trick shooter Herb Parsons, also known as “The Wizard of Winchester” stood just off camera with his own Model 71 lever-action rifle. As Stewart would be filmed taking a shot at a small metal disk thrown high in the air with a blank, Parsons, standing just off camera would put a hole on the center of he same disk with a live round, thus adding to the realism of the scene.
Photo: It has been asked about the photo of Stewart and Parsons shooting, "what is the purpose of the boxes under Jimmy Stewart's feet?" In the movie business these are called apple boxes. They come in various sizes. Although the actual reason is not recorded, when setting up a scene it is often easier to adjust (raise the height of) the person being filmed than to move the actual camera (to get a better camera angle) when a small adjustment is needed. "Apple boxes" are used for this and similar purposes all the time while making movies. We assume this is what was happening when the photo was taken. From this writer's experience, they ususally end up being used as a handy stool to sit on when the day gets long.
This frame from the movie shows how it looked when Jimmy Stewart knocked that disk dead center. Stewart gets all the credit for begin an amazing actor and a incredible human being, but Parsons gets the credit for great exhibition shooting.
(continued from above) The walnut stock of Parson’s Model 71 rifle was later signed by the members of the movie’s cast and one of the coin-sized metal disks (with a bullet hole in the center) was inset into the stock. Today that same rifle, along with several others owned and used by Herb Persons are on display at the Cody Firearms Museum.
If you’re going to be taking a vacation out West this summer, make sure you plan a day (or, better yet, a few days) exploring the thousands of guns on display at Cody Firearms Museum and all the other educational attractions located at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. If you love Western history, it will be time well spent.
Video on Herb Parsons’ Model 71 provided by the NSSF and Ashley Hlebinsky, the curator of the Cody Firearms Museum.
