James Sidney Stembridge was born in Georgia after the Civil War and served as a drill sergeant in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, but his most enduring legacy was not in military training or acting. He founded a business that would become the silent backbone of American cinema, supplying nearly every firearm seen on screen from 1920 through 2007. The company began when Stembridge, working as an extra on Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man in 1913, noticed that other extras did not know how to portray soldiers. As a former drill sergeant, he offered to coach them, developing a friendship with DeMille that would eventually lead to a partnership. During World War I, when war movies were in high demand, Stembridge saw that movie sets were struggling to access weapons. He suggested to DeMille that he set up an arsenal. Paramount subsidized the purchase of the guns, while Stembridge maintained and housed them and rented them back to the studio. The business was generally known in the film industry as the Gun Room, and its first offices were located at 5451 Marathon Street, itself a Paramount backlot.
The Arsenal That Defended A Nation
By 1940, Stembridge Gun Rentals had grown into one of the largest private arsenals in the country, boasting 7,000 rifles, 1,200 revolvers, and 200 machine guns, including Thompson M1921s and M1928s. On the 7th of December 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Fritz Dickie, who had managed the company since 1927, was contacted by the US Coast Guard to requisition the entire arsenal for use in the event of an invasion by the Japanese. The company also loaned weapons to the California State Guard and California National Guard, and after the weapons were returned, they received a letter of thanks from the Harbor Defenses command signed by Colonel W. W. Hicks of the Coast Artillery Corps. During the early years of World War II, before the company got its arsenal back, it was forced to improvise weapons to outfit war movie sets. After James Stembridge died in 1942 at the age of 72, the company was taken over by Dickie and Ed Stembridge, who had served as an ordnance officer during World War II. As the company gradually was able to purchase more newer weapons, including those captured in the war and demobilized equipment, it supplied weapons for training films.The Collection That Defined A Century
In the firm's 7,000-gun collection in 1969 were two functional Gatling guns, two 17th-century German rifles, a matchlock and a wheellock, and an 1850 palm pistol. Displays of guns of industry interest included Matt Dillon's Colt single-action, Wyatt Earp's Colt Buntline, Bat Masterson's Colt Storekeeper, and Paladin's double-barrel derringer. Almost all of the guns in the collection were fireable. At the time the company was manufacturing 430,000 blank rounds a year, and almost every US movie or television show in existence that showed a firearm firing had been supplied by Stembridge. By the 1980s the firm had over 10,000 weapons, including many of historical interest. The settlement of a family estate forced the sale of most of them, and many were purchased by Robert Petersen. The company's influence extended beyond mere quantity; it provided the specific tools that defined iconic characters and moments in film history.