Ed McGivern was a leech !

[Muley Gil]

Yes, yes, I'm not selling the guy short or trying to diminish his distinguished career.

But that doesn't change, in fact it confirms my point that you all look at him through the prism of his post-1945 fame.

The peacetime US Army in the 1920s and 1930s suffered from the severe popular backlash against US involvement in WW I, was underfunded and understaffed and was a career backwater. Patton was an officer of middling rank in an army whose biggest accomplishment in the 1930s was organizing the CCC camps for the New Deal.

Regardless of Patton's individual accomplishments, of which I'm quite aware, he was by no means the kind of well-known personality or celebrity that would have interested the marketing department in courting him in 1935. Obviously, Ed McGivern had the same issue in 1924.

I agree. Patton was well known in the Army, but the US was going through the Depression in the 1930s and the military wasn't highly regarded during the lull between the two world wars.

 

[REM 3200]

He wore a hell of a hat. Did he pay for that?

Yes, officers buy their own uniforms.

 

[jtcarm]

That was Walter Groff. The McGivern guns in the NRA collection come from his estate.



But I think they didn't get together until McGivern had attained some fame with his exhibition of skills.



As I said above, I think the year 1924, early in McGivern's time of fame, is the key for the kerfuffle over non-payments.



People have a tendency to look at a famous person's entire life with the hindsight of their eventual significance. I always notice this when Patton's Registered Magnum is discussed, and folks intimate in a worshipful tone what an honor and marketing boost it must have been for S&W that Patton ordered one of their RMs. No, it wasn't. In 1935 Patton was a Lt. Col. on staff duty in Hawaii who wasn't famous and whom very few people would have heard of yet.

Patton was, among other things, a renowned fencer and pistol marksman who competed in the first modern Olympic Pentathlon.

Add his exploits in the Punitive Expedition and WWI, and by 1935, he almost certainly had some degree of notoriety in the firearms world.

He had connections at S&W and was a proponent of the .357 during its development. My guess is he probably knew Doug Wesson personally.

I've never heard anyone say it was a marketing boost, though I wouldn't be surprised if his name was used in marketing.