The Fastest Gun in the West!

After learning about Rodd Redwing from Western writer Erv Bobo, I now believe there really was a “fastest gun in the West”--in Hollywood, California! Rodd Redwing (1904-1971), a full-blooded Chickasaw, was a Hollywood actor who appeared in over eighty movies and television shows including Key Largo, Elephant Walk, and Gunsmoke. He made his film debut in 1931 in The Squaw Man. He also coached Henry Fonda, Dean Martin, Anthony Quinn, Jerry Lewis, Glenn Ford, Alan Ladd, and other Hollywood greats in the use of guns, knives, tomahawks and whips. Redwing was able to hit a target at twenty feet in two-tenths of a second. One of his most famous stunts was tossing a knife at a target while at the same time reaching for his gun, drawing, and firing to make a bullet hole for the knife to stick into when it reached its mark.