A very physical actor, Mix was a former cattle wrangler who had learned to perform as part of touring wild west shows. John Wayne is regarded as the archetype of the macho cowboy, but he modelled his moves on Tom Mix, a silent-era megastar who was rarely seen on screen without his white 10-gallon hat. So here are four truly tough silent movie stars who can stand alongside Keaton in the stunt stakes: 1. If anything, incidents like that only boosted the hype machine, with stars and studios making ever grander claims about their bravery and agility. But then, in 1922, a performer called John Stevenson died after fracturing his skull while doubling for her. Pearl White, star of the Perils of Pauline and The Exploits of Elaine serials, was promoted as the “peerless fearless girl” who bravely executed all her own stunts. Look at early films, and you may well see the joins for yourself, but sometimes the truth hit the headlines. But accidents will happen, and it was impossible to maintain the pretence at all times. Audiences were expected to believe that serial heroines could jump out of rising hot air balloons, and screen cowboys could race their horses along cliff edges. Stunt performers had first been employed in the movies in the 1900s, but they remained something of a trade secret. He became addicted to the drug and died four years later during an attempt at rehab, aged 32. In one notorious case, matinee idol Wallace Reid was so badly injured in a train crash while filming The Valley of the Giants (1919) that he started taking morphine to cope with the pain. Owen Carter, a cameraman, jumped in to save her, but they both drowned. More seriously, Grace McHugh was thrown from her horse and into a river while shooting Across the Border (1914). The waiflike Lillian Gish famously suffered frostbite in her fingers when she lay down on an ice floe at the climax of Way Down East (1920), for example. For The Danger Girl (1916) she was asked to dive into deep water in her underwear she was terrified, partly because she couldn’t swim.Īlmost everyone had a war story. Even a star as glamorous as Gloria Swanson recalled being pressured into feats that modern actors might wince at. Rather than hiring a stunt performer as well as a star, studios would rather save the cash and hire an actor with the guts to take the plunge. In the pioneer days of the 1900s and 1910s, actors had been expected to muck in, from the rough-and-tumble of slapstick comedy, right up to the point of danger. ‘The little boy who can’t be damaged’ … Buster Keaton as a child.
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