Scott McGee - Danger on the Silver Screen: 50 Films Celebrating Cinemas Greatest Stunts

I N THE PAGES of Cinema Chat dated October 13, 1919, a review of a new photo-play called The Sands of Time warranted a special note about an actor who actually jumped off a cliff into water 119 feet below. The writer said, There is no fake about this stunt, the local coast guard having certified to the genuineness of the incident and the height of the leap. It is this element of danger that has constantly allured moviegoers from the get-go. As early as 1916, the job of stunt professionals was the subject of a profile in the New York Tribune in which the writer declares that the audience never know their names, or whether they have any, but the stunt men are the anonymous heroes who fall off the palisades, or skid into the river and keep on whistling.

Today, that still rings true. The audience rarely knows the people behind the action, but they leave the theater gobsmacked and elated by their work on the screen.

Stunt work taps into our brains, giving us pleasure by simply watching human beings do things we, the audience, cannot. Marvelous acts like jumping out a window and surviving thrill us and remind us that while we are safe in our seats, others are capable of doing amazing things for the camera.

We get a similar rush from choreographed song and dance. However, stunt work is rarely celebrated within the filmmaking industry as an art and a science, like dance is. Perhaps its assumed that anyone can plunge into an airbag or wreck a car. But a fall is not just a fall, and a crash is not just a crash, not when it is serving the story, building characters, creating tension and suspense, and putting spectacle on the big screen.

Stunt work is as meaningful, varied, and integral to filmmaking as any other cinematic element, whether it be cinematography, acting, art direction, or scoring.

The story of stunt work in film is a fascinating tale of cowboys, rodeo stars, circus performers, acrobats, hucksters, former military pilots, wrestlers, athletes, swimmers, divers, racecar drivers, and motorcycle ridersthe men and women who took the hits and made movie magic. In the early days, some were reckless daredevils who found courage in a fifth of whiskey to take a fall, the foolhardy souls that stuntman Buddy Suicide Mason called yucca-nutty, referring to someone having been hit over the head too many times with break-away furniture made of yucca.

Others during the golden age of Hollywood worked out best practices to do stunts safely and cinematically, making them look for the camera more dangerous than they really were. Today, they are seasoned professionals building on the combined learning of more than a hundred years of pulling off stunts, to now find the courage to take a fall suspended on a wire an eighth of an inch thick. Moreover, this book isnt just about the stunt pros taking the risks with planes, trains, and automobiles. Its also about the second unit directors, stunt coordinators, special effects artists, engineers, mechanics, horse wranglers, movie directors, cameramen, pilots, fight choreographers, and movie stars who helped to bring danger to the silver screen.

This is the story of how stunt work has evolved over the past one hundred years, why stunts matter to the movies, and who the people were that made routine danger just another day on the movie set. From key films of the silent era to more contemporary titles, this book tells the tale of how the stunts were planned and executed while serving the overall story. However, it does not rank them but instead explores how the craft grew and became an integral part of moviemaking with each film. Each chapter mainly focuses on one film, with some exceptions, and all feature a sidebar that briefly explores a certain person, a similar stunt created for another film, or a related bit of history. However, some chapters stand as double features when there are two films that are connected in some way.