It’s a fine idea to pay tribute to movie stuntmen, those little-known heroes of the silver screen. But one would have to be far more charmed by endless, overloud, and preposterous action scenes and brain-dead fights than I am in order to enjoy The Fall Guy, which I recently watched at the local Bijou. The American Spectator’s Leonora Cravotta is right about the movie’s boy/girl romance and the welcome clear line between good and bad. These are too rare on the large or small screen these days. But for me these positives were cancelled by the aforementioned dreary chaos at industrial decibel levels. No disrespect to the estimable Leonora. There’s no accounting for taste.
Stunt men — and I’m sure we have stunt persons now — have long added value to the action movies we’ve enjoyed. But they get little acclaim. This mostly goes to actors and directors, who, though often talented, rarely put their bodies on the line for our viewing pleasure as the stunt guys do. With AI, photo shopping, and other technical whizbangery these days, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell if a dangerous stunt was actually performed by a human being or is just some inhuman, digital trick. But there was no doubt back in the day.
Check out this stunt, which is considered the best and most dangerous movie stunt ever pulled off:
The daring stuntman is Yakima Canutt (1895–1986), a cowboy from Washington state who was a rodeo champion bronc rider before his stunt career. (He played both Indians and cowboys — no word on which side he took when he and his young mates played cowboys and Indians, a hate crime now but a popular pastime for young boys in pre-PC days.) This stunt is from the Duke’s breakout movie, 1939’s Stagecoach. It was particularly dangerous as there was not enough clearance for a man under the stagecoach, so an impression had to be dug for him to drop into. The stagecoach driver — that would be Andy Devine — had to hit it right. And Yakima had to know when precisely to let go so that he would drop into the dugout space rather than be reduced to coyote grease on the desert floor.
People in the movie biz back then kept saying that Yakima, who did stunts in a lot of the Duke’s movies and for other known Hollywood names, would eventually kill himself in one of his audacious stunts. He didn’t. He died of cardiac arrest at 90, long after his last heart-stopping stunt. He was an innovator in his stunts and also in various safety devices that he devised and that were used by him and other stuntmen. He did some directing after he was too old to continue stunt work. He directed several Westerns, along with the action scenes in various other movies, including Spartacus. He also directed the chariot race in Ben-Hur and coached Charlton Heston on how to drive a chariot without killing himself.
Yakima Canutt. Little known outside the movie biz, but a great American. RIP.
And thanks for the memories.