Evel

by Leigh Montville

  “Men would offer him their wives,” Jack Ferriter, a Butte guy who traveled with Knievel sometimes, said before he lapsed into a story that involved a woman in a red dress, her husband, Knievel, and an old-time hotel room with one of those transom windows over the door. “They thought it was an honor to give their wives to him. Women were all over him. They were attracted by the danger.”

  His major haunt in Los Angeles became Filthy McNasty’s, a bar on Sunset Boulevard that in an earlier incarnation had been the Melody Lounge, inhabited by gangsters like Bugsy Siegel. In a later incarnation, it would be the Viper Room, owned by Johnny Depp. It was owned now by the McNasty brothers, Filthy and Wolfgang, Germans who had moved from Berlin as teenagers in 1956, found a foothold in the L.A. restaurant business, changed their names from Bartsch to McNasty, and lived their version of the American dream.

  Phyllis Diller came to the bar sometimes, Little Richard, John Wayne even appeared. There was action every night of the week with loud bands, transvestite singers, mud wrestling, and a whole lot of Monte Rock III, who was a hairstylist, a singer, and mostly a flamboyant talk-show guest with Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson. Knievel fit into the picture nicely, as he left his latest extravagant automobile and a $100 bill with the valet parking attendant and signed on for the unfolding evening of high jinks.

  The high jinks would go very late. The Sunset Boulevard location had to close at 2:00 a.m., but the brothers owned a second bar in North Hollywood, which was a private club. Filthy, who sometimes sang a tune of his own composition, “You’re Breaking My Heart, You Tear It Apart, So Fuck You,” during the proceedings, drove a black Cadillac hearse with a bright orange interior. He would fill the hearse with well-oiled women and drive them to the North Hollywood location. The men would follow, and the party would keep going until sunrise.

  “Evel always would come,” Wolfgang said. “He had the cane, filled with Wild Turkey. Always drank, but never was drunk. He mostly would come by himself to the bar. He would stay in a hotel on the strip. It was funny, if his wife was in town, she might come too. He would tell her what women he had seen, who he was with a night earlier. I never knew how he could do that.”

  Linda would be there. Linda would be back in Butte with the kids. Knievel checked in and out of his different lives. Nobody said a word.

  This was the seventies. He was a full-fledged man of his time. The time was out of control.

  The plans for his oft-discussed, always-discussed canyon jump had continued through the bad times and into his new and ridiculously improved good times. He promised every year that the jump was imminent, scheduled for either the approaching Fourth of July or Labor Day, then adjusted when the actual date arrived. Every year he was like one of those end-of-the-world evangelists the day after Armageddon did not happen.

  His first postponement, back in 1968, back while he was just returning to action from Caesars Palace and then the crash at Bee Line Dragway, back when he didn’t have any real chance of clearing the distance, was the first of the disappointments. Not until three days prior to the proposed jump of the Grand Canyon near Page, Arizona, did local residents discover that the event was not going to happen.

  Knievel said the villain was the Department of the Interior, notably Secretary Stewart Udall, which had rejected his request to jump from federal lands. The presence of a Navajo reservation, whose residents also wanted to be appeased, did not help. The jump could not take place.

  “I guess they don’t want him tearing across the canyon trailing a stream of flame and scaring the Indians,” said Melvin Belli, noted defense attorney from San Francisco, hired to sue the Department of the Interior.

  The choice of Belli was typical Knievel. The lawyer’s most famous case, four years earlier, had been his pro bono defense of Jack Ruby, the accused assassin of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He always was in the news, with clients ranging from Lana Turner to Errol Flynn to Muhammad Ali. He brought Knievel into the news.

  The suit never happened, though Knievel decried Udall’s “decision” at all possible times. (Udall, contacted by writer Morris Alpern for Argosy magazine, said he never had met Knievel and always thought there was no real plan to jump the canyon, that Knievel simply used the department for publicity purposes.) Knievel wound up junking the idea of the Grand Canyon and in October of 1971 leased thirty-eight acres of pasture and brush, three years for $35,000, from farmer Tim Qualls on the edge of the Snake River Canyon, not too far from the town of Twin Falls, Idaho. Knievel had passed the canyon on motor trips with Ignatius and Emma as a boy, always remembered it. He soon told people that he had bought the land.

  The crusade now became—because of Stewart Udall and that damned Department of Interior—a jump over the Snake River Canyon. Snake River was just as good, probably better. That was the new approach. The date of the proposed jump over this canyon was painted on the side of the Evel Knievel rig, then altered each time the event was postponed. This process brought great delight to Knievel’s detractors at least once per year.

  Progress, however, had been made. The handshake deal with Doug Malewicki, the builder of toy rockets in Phoenix, finally had produced a prototype vehicle designed to carry a grown man from Butte, Montana, across a canyon, any canyon, of his choosing. Four contentious years had passed, as Malewicki struggled to wring money out of Knievel. A sequence of bounced checks and broken promises stretched out the process, but the engineer had kept working in his spare time, followed his plan, and produced the seventeen-and-a-half-foot prototype rocket, called the X-1 Skycycle, and three much smaller test rockets.

  On May 6, 1972, Knievel sponsored the Second Annual Snake River Motocross Championship races on his leased property and invited the press to the side of the canyon to see the prototype and witness the test firings of the smaller rockets. Malewicki estimated that $20,000 had been spent, none of the money on a salary for himself. He was hopeful about the test because he said Knievel had promised him a $5,000 bonus, plus expenses, if the rocket worked.

  “The deal had changed over the years,” Malewicki said. “It started out that I would get 30 percent of any profits, then 20, then 10, then 5. Now, I just wanted that bonus and expenses, go from there.”

  He felt that a major problem dealing with Knievel was being the same age. The daredevil never fully believed him, never gave him respect. Early in the development process, Malewicki had hired a scientist named Bob Truax to provide the engine that would propel the rocket. Shocked by estimates in the millions from aerospace companies to develop a jet propulsion system, he had been referred to Truax, a onetime colleague of rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. Truax was a Cold War expert who contributed to the development of the Polaris and Thor missiles, a man with a scientific imagination that had few boundaries. Truax had been fooling around with steam-power rocket engines for drag racer Walt Arfons. A Skycycle interested him.

  “I didn’t even know his background in the beginning,” Malewicki said. “He had done all of these things with rockets. He was famous. I just knew that he’d been involved with the drag racer.”

  At fifty-five, Truax was twenty-one years older than Knievel and Malewicki. He was an average-sized man with a no-nonsense crew cut, a man of strong opinions. Knievel always was polite in dealing with him. Truax’s words to Knievel seemed to matter. Malewicki’s words to Knievel were the start of an argument much of the time.

  The concept of the rocket had stayed the same: Malewicki had tried to build something that resembled a motorcycle. The prototype and the models each had two wheels, which kept the “cycle” in the name. They looked very much like rockets, however, with three fins on the back and a tapered nose in front. The X-1 was an impressive-looking machine.

  The plan for the jump was that the rocket would be ignited, travel in increasing speeds up a ramp, shoot off the ramp and into the air above the canyon. Halfway across, two solid propellant rockets would be ignited, doubling the power, which would ensure that the rocket traveled into the airspace on th
e other side, where Knievel would eject from his cockpit and parachute to the ground. A drogue shoot would also be released from the rocket. Man and rocket would land somewhat simultaneously. Ta-da. Someone would play a John Philip Sousa patriotic march. Drinks would be served.

  The test of the smaller rockets was a chance to see how well theory matched with reality. The X-1 was present only for show. Knievel posed inside. He would have to be on his knees in the cockpit, not sitting, to properly work the controls. The test rockets were all the same, affording a chance to test different trajectories. They were ignited one after another by Knievel, who pressed a button, surrounded by local kids holding their hands over their ears.

  The first rocket, launched at a twenty-eight-degree angle, was almost across the canyon when the parachute was deployed, then it fell a few feet short and into the canyon. The angle was adjusted to forty-five degrees for the second launch. A camera also was added. This heavier rocket shot across the canyon and was traveling so fast that when the parachute came out, the chute was torn right off. The speeding rocket cleared the canyon edge easily, kept flying, and landed hard and out of eyesight. Not a great outcome if you were inside the cockpit.

  The final rocket, minus the camera, also was ignited at a forty-five-degree angle. Everything seemed to work perfectly. The parachute deployed. The rocket slowly, safely, dropped to earth. A father and his son found it and returned it three hours later in fine shape.

  “The rocket did what it was supposed to do,” Malewicki said. “It was a success.”

  The success brought about a confrontation that had become inevitable. Malewicki wanted to be paid. Four years of increasing edginess had left the daredevil and the engineer in bad positions. The handshake in that hospital room in Phoenix was history from long ago. Malewicki wanted the $5,000 bonus, plus he wanted expenses.

  Knievel balked. He came up with various reasons why the engineer should not receive either the bonus or expenses. Malewicki said he would not work on the project anymore unless he was paid. Knievel continued to balk, and a couple of weeks later Malewicki quit at the same time Knievel fired him. It was not a happy ending, no matter what version was told.

  Knievel called Bob Truax the next day. He asked if the onetime NASA man would take over the project.

  Truax said he would. He said he had some ideas.

  Malewicki, mad, did what former employees do in most businesses: he took his talents across the street. He went to work for the competition. He went to work for “Super Joe” Einhorn.

  One of the by-products of success, an annoying by-product to Knievel, was that other people had started to do what he did. New motorcycle jumpers seemed to appear on the scene every month, fearless characters fueled by the same economic desperation that Knievel had in the beginning, more than willing to risk their lives for the same tenuous benefits that he received. Cycle jumping was a growth industry.

  There was no need to play in the minor leagues or sing in a string of roadhouses or sit in a classroom, bored, to perfect a talent in this business. Buy a motorcycle, buy a set of leathers, find some racetrack owner who needed one more attraction, line up the cars and ramp, take a deep breath (or a shot of Wild Turkey), and go. Become famous. Or not.

  Bob Gill, a twenty-eight-year-old guy from St. Petersburg, Florida, already had jumped a canyon, Cajun Canyon outside New Orleans, 60 feet deep and 152 feet wide, on a Kawasaki 400 on April 16, 1972, three weeks before the Snake River test. He would jump a fleet of Ryder rental trucks for a television commercial the next year. Rex Blackwell and Gary Davis out of Phoenix performed in tandem as “the Flying Cycles.” They roared at the same line of cars from different ends of the venue, hit the two ramps at the same time, and (hopefully) passed each other in midair and (hopefully) landed safely. A twenty-one-year-old named Bob Pleso from Ocala, Florida, promised to break all jumping records. A guy named Ted Keeper in Chicago drove around in a school bus that said “Ted Keeper Jumps Cheaper” on the side. He would put his life on the line for $50.

  Jumpers were everywhere. A blond twenty-year-old from Phoenix, Debbie Lawler, had opened the business to women. A former model, she disclosed that she always wore her lucky orange brassiere when she jumped. Talk shows thought she was wonderful.

  The best known of all the copycat jumpers was Super Joe Einhorn, a wild character from San Pedro, California. Divorced, broke, he truly had followed Knievel’s route to fame, especially the part about stopping in assorted hospitals on the way. He had been in some spectacular crashes. At the Cow Palace, someone had spilled a soft drink in the lobby, and Einhorn’s front wheel hit the spill in his approach and, whoa, that sent him out of control. His heart was pushed farther to the left side of his chest in the crash, and he said he now put his hand under his armpit when he recited the Pledge of Allegiance. In Sacramento he had landed short, and his Triumph 650 pretty much had disintegrated. In Charleston, South Carolina, he had jumped over a building, landed on his head, and broken his wrist, ankle, both shoulders, and a thumb. He had a lot of experience in the hospital.

  “You come to and they’re putting something in your eyes,” Einhorn said, describing hospital time to reporter Dorothy Melland of the Hutchinson (Kansas) News. “They’re always putting something in your eyes. Strange people are working over you. Then a doctor comes in and sits down and starts reading a list of injuries. He goes on and on. Broken back, dislocated shoulder, punctured lung. All that stuff. You lie there and think, ‘Gee, that poor guy.’ Then it dawns on you that the list is about your own injuries. And then you get scared.”

  The first rule for the new jumpers was to differentiate themselves from Knievel. Only Debbie Lawler stepped back, proclaimed that while she was the queen of cycle jumpers, Evel always would be the king. The rest of the jumpers routinely challenged Knievel. They boasted about how their jumps were different, more challenging. Both Gill and Pleso jumped with only a takeoff ramp, no landing ramp. More challenging. (“Ramp-to-ramp jumpers are a dime a dozen,” Pleso said.) Blackwell and Davis flew past each other. Certainly different. Einhorn stretched paper across the top of the takeoff ramps between two poles, the way cheerleaders stretched paper in front of the entrance to the field before the big homecoming game, then he burst through on the way to his jump.

  Knievel was painted as the old man at the age of thirty-five. His time was done. The new wave had arrived. This was a basic part of sales. Bigger. Faster. Better. New!

  “Knievel is a fraud,” Super Joe said in a prelude to a jump in Los Angeles. “He keeps talking about things, but he never does them. He’s been talking about jumping a canyon for six years. The Grand Canyon, the Snake River, they’re all the same, but Knievel hasn’t jumped either yet.

  “I honestly get mad when I read one claim after another that he’s made. They’re just not true. I challenged that big-mouth old-timer to a match jump-off. I suggested the pot we’d put up was $25,000 apiece, winner take all. He backed off, but there was good reason for him not to accept my challenge. The old man knew he couldn’t make it.”

  Knievel was not happy with any of this. He grumbled, “I can spit further than that,” on Wide World of Sports when Debbie Lawler broke his record at the Houston Astrodome. (He then realized his public relations mistake, invited her to a jump in Seattle, and presented her with a pink mink coat.) He appeared in Kansas City at a press conference to tell Gill to stop mentioning his name in all his promotions. He was not happy when Einhorn made the $25,000 challenge in a press conference in Sacramento, the money brought in from an armored car.

  The competition promised other jumps. Gill said he had an offer to jump over the Rolling Stones while they played “Jumping Jack Flash.” Einhorn looked into the possibility of jumping across Wall Street in New York from the roof of one building to the roof of another building. Or maybe he would jump across Niagara Falls, Canadian side to American side. Or maybe … he had interest in a canyon in Mexico.

  The canyon in Mexico idea was where Doug Malewicki had become involved
. He would help develop Einhorn’s craft to clear that canyon. He was thinking about a kite attached to a motorcycle. He had thought about that when working out the rocket for Knievel. Investors had to be found. Knievel was not happy. He was not happy with any of this stuff.

  In the final six months of 1972, his unhappiness allegedly was translated into grim action. The manager for Joe Einhorn was beaten and threatened in a San Francisco motel room. Bob Gill was beaten and threatened in a Kansas City hotel room. And Doug Malewicki, who had switched sides in the canyon-jumping business, was threatened near his own home. Knievel was not present at any of these events, but the men who were involved allegedly mentioned his name.

  “The guy said, ‘I’m supposed to kill you,’ ” Malewicki said. “ ‘You should be dead right now. I felt sorry for you, though. You have a wife, children. I am going to do a favor for you. But you should do a favor for me too.’ ”

  The speaker was a beefy man, middle-aged. He showed a gun for emphasis. His advice was that Malewicki should stop being involved with Einhorn in this project. The technology he used for Knievel should stay with Knievel. Was this too much to ask? Malewicki should consider himself warned. The beefy man left.

  The engineer was not rattled. If the goal had been to scare him, it didn’t work.

  “I knew the guy wasn’t going to kill me,” he said. “If he was going to kill me, he never would have talked to me. It would have been over before I knew anything happened. He really didn’t worry me for some reason.”

  The messages to both Einhorn’s manager and Gill were allegedly the same message that Malewicki heard, but accompanied by punches or kicks. The FBI moved into the case under the Hobbs Act, which prohibits actual attempted robbery or extortion affecting interstate or foreign commerce. All parties were interviewed.