...quips a financial backer of one of Ed Wood's latest triumphs in the 1994 fim, "Ed Wood". In the silent era, though, somebody could actually get killed during that explosion!
This episode talks about the unsung heroes of silent film when there were no unions or legal protections or computer fakery. Those were real people outrunning trains, jumping on stampeding horses, and crashing real airplanes. I wasn't familiar with any of the names other than Yakima Canutt because he was in some B oaters with John Wayne in the 30s, and Fred Thompson, because he was the one true love of Frances Marion, early screenwriter. In spite of him having to do some of his own dangerous stunts in his westerns, he actually died on Christmas day 1928 of tetanus.
Some of the silent stars claimed to do all of their own stunts, but if a star such as Douglas Fairbanks was injured in a stunt, then the whole production stopped. So in the long shots even Fairbanks had a stunt man.
Some of the more jarring stories - "The Trail of 98" is recounted as the worst disaster in film history not because of its financial returns, but because of the loss of life involved. This film was shot on location in Alaska. An assistant director was in charge of setting up ropes lined with steel across a raging frozen river so the stunt men could grab the ropes at the last minute. The ropes were hung without steel, the ropes warped in the freezing cold, and four men were lost. Viola Dana, who lost her director husband in 1918 to the Spanish flu, finds a second chance at love with a barn storming stuntman. In 1920, she began a relationship with pilot Ormer "Lock" Locklear. He was making a movie with Fox that involved him pulling out of a tail spin, but required the ground crew to signal him. The signal never came and Locklear crashed to his death. Viola Dana saw the whole thing and would not fly in an airplane again for 25 years.
There are lots of interviews with the surviving stuntmen, including Canutt, and of course some of it is archival footage because not everybody was still around by 1980. It is a fascinating watch especially in a day when ladders come with legal warnings "You may fall resulting in severe injury. Consult your physician first".
