Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1923 - Feb 1924)

26 Should An Actor Be An Acrobat? swirling waters. These close-ups were cleverly patched to the long shots of the raft, with "Red" and the girl-dummy on the actual brink of the falls. Bowers and' Miss Sweet, however, did some really dangerous work for that picture, for even the close-ups at the edge of the water were a risk, inasmuch as the rocks were slippery and the current very strong. Bowers also did the close-ups of the spectacular scene where a runaway horse hitched to a buggy, crashed into a fence, throwing the "girl" — a slim boy-double dressed in Barbara La Marr's clothes — upon the ground. The boy was injured but recovered in a week or two. Red doubled for Bowers in the scene where the hero stepped out upon the shafts, seeking to curb the runaway steed. For his work in this picture "Red" received one thousand dollars, involving several weeks' work and untold danger. "The stunts we are most called upon to do," said this dare-devil who has played tag with death upon many occasions, "are jumping from trestles and bridges to automobiles or trains and falling horses down cliff's." Red was the first to convince a producer it was -possible to "fall" a horse without stationing some one outside the camera range to shoot it, the method used for years to cause a thrilling scene of horse and rider tumbling down a hill. He also doubled for Bill Hart in many pictures. It is not generally known that Hart could not, with safety, because of his age, be expected to .perform all the active stunts which were a part of his films, though he did many a feat that few young men would care to undertake. But, in "The Toll Gate," for example. Red, dressed in Hart's clothing, was tied and thrown from a train going twenty-five miles an hour. In "The Rear Car," recently completed, he doubled for both Johnny Walker and Jean Hersholtz, after they had finished the necessary close-ups and gone on to new roles in other productions. He jumped from train to train and from the tops of tunnels and high banks onto the swifty moving flat cars. Jean Perkins, called "the ace of stunt men," gave his life that Bill Desmond's name might be glorified in feats of action Bill was not to blame for the fact that the air currents interfered with the plane from which Perkins was todrop to a moving train, causing the plane to remain too long aloft. Perkins dropped one hundred and fifty feet to the ground. Bill did not lack the courage to perform the scene, but that Al Wilson once more, snapped while doing one of his aerial stunts. was Perkins' business ; he had been trained to it. John Stevenson, another stunt man, was killed about a year ago while doubling for Pearl White in her last serial. Such a death attracts little attention. It's just another stunt man, unsung, ungrieved by the world he had amused when masquerading as another. There are many more, gay adventurers all, willing to take his place. Do you remember the scene in "Manslaughter" when a motor cycle smashed into a roadster ? Leo Nomis, doubling" for the chap who played the motor cop, had timed the scene as accurately as possible, telling Mr. De Mille, "I'll have to collide while going forty-five, fast enough to catapult me over. Too slow would just mangle me with the wreckage." Leo's memento of the occasion was a fractured kneecap. For "Prodigal Daughters," he turned a plane over, with Ralph Graves and Gloria Swanson playing the close-ups at the studio, the plane being erected in a rigging affair upon a pendulum-arrangement which made it rock and pitch. Al Wilson, the first man to change planes in mid-air without a rope ladder, is one of the most skilled stunt aviators. He hangs by his ankle from a rope suspended from a plane, stands on his head on the very edge of the wing, while the plane, four thousand feet in the air, does a tail spin. Now Al has received his reward, an acting role with some stunts, in the Universal serial, "The Eagle's Talons." Charles Hutchison, the former Pathe serial star, was another real acrobat who performed his own daring" deeds of danger. When Ann Little, costarring with Fred Thompson, admitted that she had used a double the day before, I nearly fell over backward. "Why say I did something when I didn't? The public knows I'm not such a dumb-bell as to go jumping from the roofs of buildings with no net to catch me. I've got but one life and I kind of like it." Ann. however, does all of the hard-riding scenes for her serials. And I saw Fred Thompson jump from a building into a speeding automobile. In one episode of this serial is a sequence requiring the hero's changing from motor cycle to airplane. Thompson did the scene of the actual change, with both cycle and plane going at medium speed. Then as he started to climb the ladder, the scene was cut. A double took his place for the long shots, which showed the plane soaring aloft, with the double Continued on page 85