An Old Man
It's not a 1911, but a Browning GP or *Hi-Power* of late 1960s vintage, used by actor John Wayne in the 1974 motion picture McQ, about which more info *here*.
Though both designs were the brainchild of John Moses Browning, The HP was designed by John M. Browning circa 1925 and patented in the USA in 1927 shortly after Browning's November 1926 death. The design was then refined by Belgian designer Dieudonne Saive [who later gave us his efforts in the form of the FN49 and FAL rifles] who eliminated the striker-fired feature included in Browning's two original prototypes, and utilized several features of Browning's 1911 when the patents for it expired in 1928, including a removable 1911-type muzzle bushing not present on the final 1935 version. The French military specifications called for a magazine capacity of at least 10 shots with a loaded weight under one kilogramme, and Browning's prototypes offered staggered-row magazines with a 16-round capacity. Saive developed the magazine further, taking inspiration from the post-WWI Estonian Talinn SMG magazine, at that time the most compact width/thickness 9mm magazine available. The finished sample held 13 rounds, which with a little follower rework can result in a reliable working capacity of 14 in the magazine and one additional chambered round without the magazine extending prominently from the pistol's butt.
Colt's 1910 .45 pistol prototype had some problems with locking of the slide stop, and the required addition of the manual thumb safety, resulting in the final 1911 design's inclusion of a spring housing that drove a plunger at either end, one for the slide stop and another providing a positive latch for the thumb safety. On the P-35 this was eliminated.
The French commission tested the result in 1925, their requests for improvements resulted in the Mle 1928, very close to what production guns would resemble, with the magazine capacity reduced to 13 rounds in order to meet the French 1-kilo weight requirement. Since the guns were to be produced at the Belgian FN factory rather than in France, the French instead adopted the MAS design of 1935, and the grip of the 1929 design curved to allow a better grip on the weapon. In 1934 the final design entered production, and in 1935 it was adopted by the Belgian military as the Model 1935, followed shortly thereafter by an order from Finland for a version with an adjustable rear sight for their air force, delivered circa 1939, just in time for the new pistol to see use in the Russo-Finnish *Winter War* resulting from the November invasion of Finland by Soviet forces.
The Beginning: Second [locked breech] Browning Model 1922 prototype:
The refinement: The Model 23 *Grand Reudement,* with Saive's external hammer, manual safety, magazine safety and simplified takedown:
Model 1928 type:
The final result: Finnish PreWar [WWII] Air Force P.35
