Buster Keaton’s most famous stunt was in ‘Steamboat Bill Jr’ (1928). The wall of a house falls on Keaton, but he isn't hurt because he is standing exactly where an open window lands.
In the 1995 film ‘Vampire in Brooklyn’, stuntwoman Sonya Davis died after falling from a high building. Many people criticised the film industry for her death.
Nowadays, most films use both CGI and stunt. Still, many actors prefer to do their own stunts. For ‘The Matrix’ (1999), Keanu Reeves trained for six month to do the amazing fight scenes.
For this famous stunt in Safety Last (1923), they built a set on the roof of the actual building. They copied the top two floors of the building and laid down mattresses in case Harold Lloyd fell the 20 feet or so.
Insurance companies insist that stuntmen and stuntwomen do dangerous scenes instead of famous actors because it would cost too much if the stars got injured.
Many stunts were extremely dangerous. In the Bond film ‘Live and Let Die’ (1973), stuntman Ross Kananga walks on crocodiles to get across a river. The last crocodile bit his foot!
The James Bond films were famous for stunts. In ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ (1974), Bumps Willard, as James Bond, drives a car off a bridge and turns it over in the air.
The stunt industry was at its best in the films of the seventies and eighties. The brave (or mad!) stuntmen and women did more and more amazing things.
The feats of daring actors in the early days of Hollywood were very dangerous and insurance companies soon started asking for stuntmen and women to take the place of the actors.
In the early days of cinema, actors did their own stunts. Stars in silent films, like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, took great risks to make their films funny. They thought it was part of a comedian’s job.
A giant Lego figurine has washed ashore in Florida, bearing the cryptic message “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE.” Lego has denied that it is a viral marketing stunt.
A giant Lego figurine has washed ashore in Florida, bearing the cryptic message “NO REAL THAN YOU ARE.” Lego has denied that it is a viral marketing stunt.