Obituary - Peggy Cummins, actress and star of influential thriller Gun Crazy

Died December 29, 2017

PEGGY Cummins, who has died aged 92, was a British actress who became known as one of the first and most memorable of the femme fatales of the 1940s and 1950s. Her greatest film, 1950’s Gun Crazy, is often cited as a precursor to Bonnie and Clyde and an influence on the French New Wave.

Cummins’ role as Annie Laurie Starr was certainly the most memorable of a career in which she usually played demure types. Annie is a sharpshooter who corrupts a young man who sees her perform in a sideshow; she promises him she will try to be good, but she's also tired of not having enough money. “What’s your idea of living?” asks her boyfriend at one point and she replies “It’s not 40 bucks a week. I’ve been kicked around all my life, but from now on I’m going to start kicking back ... I want things, a lot of things, big things”

Eventually, the couple go on a crime spree together, robbing banks, which leads to one of the most extraordinary scenes in the film: a long, three-minute shot which follows the couple in their car without a cut. Nothing like it had ever been seen before. The influence on Bonnie and Clyde can also be seen in Annie’s distinctive look - she wore a beret and wielded a gun 20 years before Faye Dunnaway did the same thing in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.

For Cummins, the role in Gun Crazy was a consolation after losing out over the lead in Forever Amber six years before. Based on the hugely successful novel, the producers had launched a search for an actress to play Amber that echoed the worldwide search for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

Cummins was eventually chosen to play the part, having been spotted by a 20th Century Fox scout on the London stage. She was taken over to America - she was just 18 at the time - and shooting on Forever Amber began. However, the producer Darryl F Zanuck then decided Cummins was not, in his words, sexy enough and scrapped the filming that had already been done. The role of Amber was given to Linda Darnell.

For Cummins, it was a huge disappointment. “It was shattering,” she said. “To get a part like that and then the production was shut down. But I went on.” And other parts came along. She starred in The Late George Apley and Moss Rose, both in 1947. She also appeared in Escape with Rex Harrison.

Gun Crazy came along in 1950 and, on paper, it was not that promising. It was produced by the Kozinsky brothers, Frank, Maurice, and Herman, who had a reputation for low-rent B-movies, but it was written by the great Dalton Trumbo, although he had to use another writer as a front as he had been blacklisted by Un-American Activities Committee. It was also directed with style and pace by Joseph H. Lewis.

The film has since become a cult favourite, with admirers including the French New Wave directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

Cummins herself also recognised it as the greatest achievement in her relatively short career. She was born in Wales to a journalist father and actress mother and began acting as a child, although she originally wanted to be a ballet dancer. She made her stage debut when she was 13 before moving to Hollywood in 1945.

Five years later, she left the US and appeared in a number of other films, including the 1957 horror Night of the Demon, before retiring from acting in the 1960s. She married the businessman Derek Dunnett and is survived by her son and daughter.