"The Iron Mistress"

The knife used by Alan Ladd in the "Iron Mistress"
Collection of Joseph Musso

The Iron Mistress Knife was designed by John Beckman, the Art Director on the 1952 film of the same name, starring Alan Ladd as Jim Bowie, and made by the prop maker, Arthur Rhoades, at Warner Bros. It was then rented out for Kenneth Tobey to use as Bowie in Disney's "Davy Crockett" (1955), Sterling Hayden in "The Last Command," Richard Widmark in John Wayne's "The Alamo" and Scott Forbes in the pilot episode of "The Adventures of Jim Bowie" TV series (1956). After the series was sold, the producers at Desilu Studios made their own version of the Iron Mistress Knife, rather than continuing to rent it from Warner Bros. every week. Besides the steel blade, Rhoades also made a hollow sheet metal version in which half the blade retracts in the other half to give the allusion of stabbing someone and rubber IM Knives when walking around with it in the scabbard, or knife fighting, or on horseback or just wapping baddies over the head.