Quote:
Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008
Unfortunately, there were LOTS more boutique and smaller armories in the 1980s. Just the ads in the local Motion picture resource guide indicated that we had as many as 30 places to rent guns (of course few were as big as ISS or Stembridge at the time). Also, many on set armorers used weapons from their own stock (small amounts) or used weapons from other sources (I recall several films which rare guns were borrowed from their owners or museums and then returned). It would be near impossible to be complete in this endeavor since so many of the smaller players were never listed. And the state and feds have driven so many out of business since then.
Only now we have the phenomenon of lots of licensed on set gun wranglers who have no gun inventory of their own. Harry Lu is a great example. They're in charge of all the weapons, but they have no rental inventory of their own. But back in the day, there were way more players in this industry, especially in the 70s and 80s.
This would only make it appear that only a few companies did ALL of the work in Hollywood. Which would be incorrect.
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I don't think that would be the intent at all, nor do I think it would have that effect (and we can add a note of caution on the index for armory pages). And we can always add pages for smaller shops that had unique weapons, should the need arise.
Even on a movie page where we list the armory, the heading can read: "Weapons supplier(s)", implying that the guns came from more than one place.
Obviously, we will never be 100% complete in getting every armory and accounting for every source, but that is not the intent. The intent is to make sure that readers can understand the origins and the back story behind guns that they are seeing repeatedly in motion pictures.