JackieMatra
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- Maryland, U.S.A.
I believe blanks were always used in the film industry. The reason for the guns being pointed off to one side was that it was one of the innumerable rules of the Code that if the gun and the victim were in the same frame, the gun could not be pointed directly at the victim. Go figure.
I'm afraid that I can't find the still photograph to support this, but I definitely recall seeing one in a book, which showed the filming of a Cagney film, perhaps "G-Men", which showed a marksman kneeling on some non-too-solid-looking scaffolding, preparing to fire live rounds from a Thompson sub-machine gun at the side of a building near James Cagney's head, with a caption under the photograph saying that this is what is shown in the photograph.