Stewart Granger - Wesley Richards aficionado

[skydiver386]

Watching a few old Hollywood African Safari movies brought up Stewart Granger. I'm certainly not the most knowledgeable on the subject of Double Rifles, but quality and craftsmanship are things all of us can appreciate.

Stewart Granger’s .577 hand detachable lock double rifle, made in 1921 for Count Alfred Potocki author of one of the rarest books on hunting, Sport in Somaliland. Gun 17754.

 

[skydiver386]

Granger’s guns were inlaid with the animals he had shot with his gun, rhino, buffalo, elephant, and the ‘c’ denoted that the animal had charged him.

 

[skydiver386]

Malcolm Lyell, then manager of the Westley Richards London shop, recalled of Granger as customer: “Soon after the 2nd World War he bought an estate near Haslemere and purchased a pair of Westley Richards best single trigger guns. In 1950, he came to tell me that he and Deborah Kerr were going to star in the film King Solomon’s Mines. He said ‘when I’m off set with Deborah, I want to get in among the buffalo.’ So I fitted out Jimmy with a best quality Westley Richards single trigger .577 double rifle, a .375 Holland and Holland Magnum magazine rifle, as well as a .240. He was a big man and very powerful. He handled that big .577 as if it were a .22! He used the rifles in Kenya, Uganda and the Congo, while on location and went back to East Africa in the years afterwards.”

 

[Saul]

I can trace my dream of hunting Africa directly back to when I first saw King Solomon’s Mines.

 

[PerH]

Interestingly the 8 bore he uses at first in Kong Solomon belonged to Jan Viljoen , the legendary SA hunter , explorer and politician .