Ever Met Gladys?

[Imaginos]

I finally ran into some gun slang I had never encountered before.
Most of us are familiar with slang words like Gat, Roscoe, Rod, Heat, Heater, Chopper, etc. Most of them seem to come from the Roaring 20's and pulp detective novels.

In the movie "Sin City", the character Marv (played by Mickey Roarke) is going through his hardware inventory prior to taking down one of the bad guys, and he calls the name "Gladys" when the picture of his 1911 comes on the screen. Most of the dialog in this movie is classic Spillane, and done in the Sam Spade voice-over style. The reference to "Gladys" caught my attention because I had never heard it before in any of the old movies I have watched.

Anyone else had heard of "Gladys" being used in reference to a firearm prior to Sin City?

 

[AlaskaErik]

My guess is that it was a personalized name for that particular 1911, as opposed to a generic slang term that denotes a type of weapon.

 

[AndyC]

It's not slang - it's the gun's name. Like "Ol' Slabsides" or whatever.

 

[Imaginos]

Not Personalized

I thought about the personalized name angle, but this weapon was acquired from a recently deceased hit man. It was not part of the character's stuff at the beginning of the movie. That is what made me curious.

 

[Ala Dan]

Yep, I've met her; and as a matter of fact, I live with GLADYS~!

 

[Phaetos]

Maybe it was like Eleanor in "Gone in 60 Seconds". He just happened to get it off a dead guy

 

[steveracer]

Gladys was a nun from Marv's school days.

He took the .45 from the toughest man that ever came after him. He named her Gladys after a nun from his boyhood school days. The slight backstory is one a very few moments in the graphic novel where there's anything specific about Marv, basically the baddest badass in comics.
It was meant to be a Colt, and they actually had Frank Miller pick guns from the Colt catologue, but somewhere the prop guys got misdirected and bought SAs. There's a blurb about it in the "making of" book that accompanied Sin City as a package during the days before the film hit theatres.
I don't have a Gladys, but I have a Nurse Ratchett.

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

I'm going to name my 1911 "Sweet Pea" lol jk

 

[Stickjockey]

'"Name? She's got a name!"






I call her "Vera."'

 

[Imaginos]

Graphic Novel

I have a few Sin city excerpts related to Marv in some other Dark Horse books, but I never got my hands on the entire graphic novel, but that explains a lot. Guess it is time to raid the comic store.
Thanks SteveRacer.

 

[MrPeter]

I call her "Vera."'

I still say FireFly was the best SciFi series/flick ever.

There was as a time when I called my Russian M91/30 "Natasha". I think I'm going to name my 6" GP-100 Stainless "Bertha", because dangit, she weighs a TON! Almost more than my AK!