Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver - Media Usage

Media Usage

The Webley-Fosbery makes an appearance in the classic film The Maltese Falcon. It is the gun linked to the killing of Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer. Spade, played by Humphrey Bogart, erroneously identifies the gun (and mispronounces the name as "Foresby"), saying, "It's a Webley-Foresby, .45 automatic, eight shot. They don't make 'em anymore." While the .38 caliber did have an eight-round capacity, the .455 (not .45) did not. And though some .455 Webleys were modified to fire the more common .45 ACP cartridge by use of half-moon clips, unless specially modified on an individual basis, there was never a .45 caliber eight-shot Webley-Fosbery Automatic Revolver. In the original Dashiell Hammett novel the gun is correctly identified as a "Thirty-eight, eight shot".

The Webley-Fosbery also makes an appearance in the motion picture Zardoz, where it is used by Sean Connery's character "Zed". The two-handed method of manually cocking the revolver can be seen several times in the film. As a movie prop firing blanks and not live ammunition, the absence of adequate recoil would not allow for automatic recoil cocking.

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