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25
Be An Acrobat?
his life and limb by performing per-: hazardous feats the stories call for?
Gebhart
I learn from authentic sources that Richard Talmadge, now being featured in his own productions, doubled for Fairbanks for a long time, at the largest salary ever paid a stunt man, five hundred dollars a week. Talmadge also doubled for Larry Semon and for other stars, one of his stunts being to swing from cables eighty feet in the air, falling to the ground.
Fairbanks, however, performs the majority of his thrilling deeds. Athletic, he has trained himself so that his muscles respond like electric wires. But even in the instances where Doug actually does the dangerous stunt, it is rehearsed before by some one else, or else the distance of the leap, say, is accurately measured and the stunt practiced on the ground first, that the risk may be reduced to a minimum.
The thrilling leap from roof to roof that occupied the screen for but a momentary flash in "The Three Musketeers," was the result of days of painstaking experimentation, and rehearsal on the ground and from slight elevations. .For Doug, just like you and I, regards his own life as something very necessary to have around.
Ruth Roland always has done many of her hazardous stunts and now — to quote the slim young boy who has" performed some of her dangerous thrills for her, "Ever since t'Merton of the Movies' came out, Miss Roland's been doing a lot of stunts that I ought to be doing. She says her professional reputation is at stake. But) so is mine. If the serial. stars get it into their heads that they've got to live up to their publicity, we stunt men wont' have any reputations— or jobs — left."
Gaylord Lloyd once got himself into a hot box at the studio bv confessing to an interviewer — who didn't know any more than to go and print what he said — that he dotvbled for brother Harold, driving the Ford through fences and buildings for "Get Out and Get Under" and doing the railroad stunts for "Now or Never." Quickly hushed up, Gaylord has since been most inconspicuous. Whether he performed those stunts, I do not know, as I did not happen to be present when they were taken and have come to the conclusion that the only record to believe is that of my very own eyes. But I do know that Harold takes as many chances with his life as any man on the screen. He threw his shoulder out of joint while making hairraising scenes for "Safety Last."
Ruth Roland about to dive from the deck of a ship. Like Irene Castle, she is a splendid swimmer, and insists on doing such stunts as this herself.
Do you recall Ouincy Adams Sawyer's wild ride on the edge of a cliff to save the blind heroine in the picture of that name when she was cast adrift on a raft — and the spectacular leap from horseback down the cliff into the water? John Bowers played the hero — but Ray "Red" Thompson did that scene. Bowers played the close-ups.
"Red" also doubled for Bowers in the rescue scenes, where he saved the "girl" — a dummy dressed as Blanche Sweet — as the raft hung upon the brink of the falls. For the close-ups of Miss Sweet and Bowers, apparently upon the edge of the falls, the raft was first placed in a calm pool of water,
then rocked by a maAl Wilson making a chine beneath to give dangerous leap in "The the effect of being
Eagle's Talons." tossed around by the