Stuntwomen

by Mollie Gregory

  Leslie believed that her work on the stuntwomen’s survey in 1982 damaged her career. “Virtually, I was blacklisted,” she said. Once she was elected to the board of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild, she created an executive group of “independent” stunt people to keep the board informed of vital issues. “Steve Waddell was the SAG staffer who administered the decisions of that group,” Leslie said. “I don’t recall how it came up, but I told him I was blacklisted. I wasn’t sure he believed me. Later at a meeting of the stunt executive group, Steve asked the stuntmen if I was blacklisted. They said, ‘Yeah, she’s blacklisted.’ They didn’t care. No one had the power to touch them.”

  In 1985 Leslie left the board, but she was still blacklisted and worked on only a few shows a year. Despite her frustrations, she had fun in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988), in which she doubled Jeanette Charles as Queen Elizabeth II for a slide down a fully set banquet table. Stunt coordinator Dennis Madalone, who was not a member of any stunt association, hired Leslie as assistant coordinator on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995). She began solo coordinating in 1996, working on Mulligans! and ABC Afterschool Specials.32

  Jean Coulter survived her jump from the car with Julie, but she did not survive sexual harassment. As Debbie Evans said, “You can’t play along with it.” Jean didn’t play along—she sued. For Jean, it began in 1980 on a two-part episode of Vega$, an Aaron Spelling production. “Roy Harrison was running it,” Jean said. She had been hired to do car work and double singer Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. “I was on the set when Roy Harrison said, ‘Why don’t you come up to my room with me?’ I said, ‘Thanks for the compliment, but no thank you.’ I knew he was dating a new stuntwoman—she had the room next to mine and I heard them partying. The next day, Roy asked me again. I declined. That night the call sheet listed two people to double Michelle Philips. I went to the production office and asked him, ‘What’s this?’ and he said, ‘You’re running up to the car and the other woman is driving the car.’ That was totally embarrassing. I drove cars on many shows and I’d been hired on this show to do that job. He said, ‘If you don’t like it, go home.’ I said I’d go home. He yelled at everyone in that office, ‘She’s on the first plane out of here,’ and yelled at the unit manager, ‘Get her on the plane and if you have problems, call Uncle Aaron,’ meaning Aaron Spelling. That’s when the nightmare began,” Jean said. “I didn’t know the power he had. Roy started walking on sets, and in front of everyone he’d tell the stunt coordinator, ‘She’s blacklisted, get her off the lot.’ After that, I heard from other stuntwomen who’d refused him. They’d been blacklisted but had never told anyone, and they never sued.”33 Jean did.

  In an exposé of sexual harassment for TV Guide, Mary Murphy reported Jean’s allegation that she had been “blacklisted after she refused advances of a stunt coordinator employed by Spelling-Goldberg Productions.”34 When another stuntwoman told Jean that “the guys” were going to say she had slept with them to get jobs, Jean was devastated. That other stuntwoman offered Jean her support, saying, “I’ll go to court with you because this isn’t right.” Previously, Jean had worked 199 days a year; now she worked only 12 days a year. “It took me a long time to realize the blacklist was really happening. You can’t buy a job or make payments on your house. Friends turn their backs, afraid they’d be run out of town.” Harrison denied the charges but would not “comment further on the advice of his attorney retained by Spelling-Goldberg.”35

  “Blacklisting means you lose,” Julie said, “but it’s up to you if you stay a loser. You learn a lot when you’re blacklisted. You learn about survival. In the end, when the issue is safety versus profits, it became a matter of conscience. To me, the producers and the Screen Actors Guild abdicated their responsibilities.” Julie kept working with the stuntwomen at SAG, but soon the effort to get her day in court took over her life.

  For these activist stuntwomen, their fight for on-the-job safety was hard to separate from their battles against discrimination and harassment. In 1983 some of the changes advocated by minorities and women became part of SAG’s basic agreement with producers: “Where the stunt performer doubles for a role which is identifiable as female and/or Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific or Native American and the race and/or sex of the double are also identifiable, stunt coordinators shall endeavor to cast qualified persons of same sex and/or race involved.” The phrase “shall endeavor” had no teeth, and some stunt coordinators didn’t “endeavor” very hard. Others did, however, and stuntwomen starting out in the 1980s and 1990s did not face the steep, callous difficulties of the hero-women who had created the first stuntwomen’s associations and made “getting the wigs off men” their first priority.

  Major challenges remained, including unequal pay and a paucity of female stunt coordinators. Other challenges that arose in the 1990s were quite different and revolved around changes in moviemaking. But by then, stuntwomen were quite different, too.

  11

  Women’s New Attitudes

  and Ambitions

  You must make yourself do things that normally you wouldn’t tolerate at all.

  —Donna Evans

  For Hollywood stunt performers, the decade of the 1980s had two faces—the rising incidence of injury and death on productions contrasted sharply with the buoyant profitability marked by expanding professional opportunities on many levels. Evidence of the growing power of Hollywood beyond the box office started in 1980, when SAG member and former California governor Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States.

  That same year, former schoolteacher Sherry Lansing became president of production at 20th Century–Fox. At other studios, women were also on the rise: Paula Weinstein, president of production at United Artists; Barbara Corday, president of Columbia Pictures Television; Dawn Steel, president of Columbia Pictures; and Suzanne dePasse, president of Motown Productions. No longer relegated to the secretarial pool, many women became “assistants” with genuine upward mobility. Two of those who turned their early training into high-powered positions were Amy Pascal, chair of Sony Columbia Pictures, and Nikki Rocco, president of domestic distribution at Universal Pictures. The struggles of the 1970s had started to pay off—not only in the executive suites but also in the hard-hitting arena of stunts.

  The rise of American stunt families had begun in the 1930s. In Los Angeles these names included Avery, Canutt, Dashnaw, Deadrick, Elam, Ellis, Epper, Evans, Kahana, Kingi, Happy, Leavitt, Leonard, McDancer, Rondell, Washington, and Wyatt. Stunt work as a familial enterprise thrives wherever films are made. Handy as it is to have relatives in the business, building a successful career depends on skill. Those without it won’t get very far.

  Between 1980 and 1990 the number of stunt performers tripled—from 629 to 1,954. Most of them were white men. African Americans were still a minority, totaling just 329 (only 32 of them women), as were stuntwomen, whose numbers increased from 85 to 306.1 These increases resulted from the type of movies being produced, publicity about stunts, and changing social views that led to greater acceptance of women’s action roles. In the business of stunts, there had been a time when women were not allowed to do certain kinds of stunts, but that was beginning to change.

  Stuntwomen entering the business in the 1980s had been raised by moms who often worked outside the home; they had grown up watching The Flying Nun and Wonder Woman, and many of them were college graduates. Stuntwomen of the past had been brave and determined, but this new generation was armed with a new kind of confidence—they had expectations, not just hopes. The press repeatedly announced, “Women are breaking the glass ceiling,” but as Gloria Steinem later noted, gender had not yet been identified as “probably the most restricting force in American life.”2 Even so, these stuntwomen had a better chance of making it than any previous generation.3 If they had to prove themselves, that was fine with them.

  A new generation of fathers was a big part of that chang
e. Traditionally, dads helped their sons’ careers; now they also supported their daughters. “Our dad figured we could do anything sons could do,” Donna Evans said. A factory-sponsored motorcycle racer, David Evans raised both his daughters to ride dirt bikes competitively. With his encouragement, Donna’s older sister Debbie became a motorcycle champion before she started performing stunts in the 1970s. In high school Donna didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, “but there was my sister, one of the few women flipping cars. I thought it was insane, but the more I saw what she did, the more I thought of giving it a shot.” When Debbie got Donna a job riding a motorcycle on the TV series CHiPs (Debbie was a regular on the show), Donna discovered how much she liked stunts.

  Donna recalled talking to Jeannie Epper about the old days, when a stuntman might have to jump off a wagon just before it went over a cliff. “Sometimes a stuntman froze and went over the cliff with the wagon and died,” Donna said. “I learned there are two kinds of people in stunts—those motivated by fear that go into hyperdrive to do whatever is needed. Others are paralyzed by fear. I thought I’d be motivated, but wasn’t sure. After Christine, I knew I had what it took.” Christine, a 1983 movie directed by John Carpenter and based on a Stephen King novel, is about a death-dealing 1958 Plymouth Fury. In one scene, the killer car chases Donna into a closed garage—with no way out. But there are racks of tires hanging above her head. To escape the fury of the Fury, she leaps up and clings to the rack by her hands and feet. “They’d welded two bars hidden among the tires,” she said, “one for my hands and one for my feet. I jumped up, grabbed the bar, swung my feet up on the other bar, and flattened myself against the tires. When I didn’t get my feet all the way up on the bar, it made me swing backwards into the path of the car, which was going at a fairly fast clip. I had to get up there. It had to look like the car would run me over. No room for error.” She didn’t recall how many times she had to do it, maybe ten. “I was absolutely determined to do a great piece of action.”

  Donna Evans, who learned early what it takes to do stunt work. (Courtesy of Donna Evans)

  At age eleven, Donna had learned that in addition to having mental concentration and athletic ability, “you must make yourself do things that normally you wouldn’t tolerate at all.” She and her dad were racing their motorcycles in the desert, passing different checkpoints. “About fifty miles out from the finish, my hands gripped the throttle and it became very painful. I couldn’t open my hands, I had to slide them off sideways and peel my fingers open. It really hurt, but I couldn’t tell him because we were riding and riding. Finally we got to a checkpoint. I said my hands hurt so much I couldn’t ride anymore. He said, ‘We’re halfway up. It’s either ride it or push it.’ He was right, we were in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t leave my bike out there—it was my favorite! I had to come up to the bar, go through pain even if I didn’t think I could. I shut up and did it. That’s the mentality you must have to do stunts.”

  Years later, Donna attributed her ability to finish a stunt to her dad. One night, while doubling Linda Hamilton on the TV pilot for Beauty and the Beast (1987–1990), she was supposed to fall, as if unconscious, out of a moving van. The van would be traveling parallel to a curb, edged by a grassy downhill slope where the camera was placed. “They wanted me to fall out and roll right up to [the camera], but it isn’t easy to roll across, not down the slope. I had to roll [in] the wrong direction. The first time gravity took over—I rolled straight down the hill. The next was better, and the third time I rolled right up to the box at the base of the camera. But my dress flew up, my flesh-colored tights made me look naked, and this was for TV!” There was one other little problem: when she fell out of the van the third time, she hit the curb and separated her shoulder. “That fourth time I had to land on my separated shoulder, but many stunt people do things like that. I don’t know if it’s toughness or stupidity.”

  Kym Washington has an air of elegance and energy, but, she admits, “I was my father’s tomboy ‘son.’” Growing up, she excelled in gymnastics, and she thought her dad’s work as a stunt coordinator looked like fun because it “wasn’t your normal everyday job.” Her father, Richard Washington, discouraged his daughter. “I thought she could do something else, and the work had a certain amount of risk. I stretched her training to well over a year.” Thanks to Jadie David and other stuntwomen of color, Kym would not experience the same obstacles. “Jadie was special, she was a real mentor,” Kym said, “and so were Donna and Debbie Evans. They and my dad tried to teach me about motorcycles. I wanted cars.” Her first stunt, on the pilot of a Universal TV series called Cliffhangers (1979), was to fall from a rafter into a bed of stacked boxes. Stunt coordinator Tony Brubaker had hired Kym, but she wouldn’t do the stunt until her dad was there. “He arrived just as they called ‘Action!’” Richard remembered, “She was sweating bullets, but she did it. I told my wife, ‘Kym’s going to be a stuntwoman.’ She said, ‘She just got one job.’ I said, ‘Wait till she gets the check!’ Kym hasn’t looked back since.”

  Kym Washington knew what she wanted. (Courtesy of Kym Washington)

  For those who are new to the business, every stunt has a survival lesson. “The bridge on the Universal Studios tour is called the collapsing bridge,” Kym said. “It shakes so hard it seems about to fall apart.” In one scene from The Nude Bomb (1980), frightened tourists leap off the bridge into the lake below. “People say they can do a job because they need work, but one ‘tourist’ couldn’t swim,” Kym recalled. “He jumped off, then I jumped, I’m on my way down, but he panics, walks totally over me, pushes me to the bottom. Each time I got near the surface, he’d walk over me. The safety divers pulled him out. I was so new it was scary. My dad said you never know what someone else will do. You have to look out for yourself.” That key advice has been passed down from stunt veterans to rookies through the decades. It was vital in the 1980s, as stunts became more complicated and “realistic.”

  Kym’s dad had learned that lesson on The Deep (1977). In addition to being one of the stunt coordinators, Richard Washington was doubling Lou Gossett; stuntman Howard Curtis was doubling Robert Shaw. During an underwater fight, one of them was supposed to be pulled head-first toward an opening where a deadly eel lurked. “For a practice to block things out,” Rich said, “they asked me to put my head in the opening to see the angle on the eel. It was on a track, its hydraulic jaws were to close to six inches, enough space for my head to fit in. For some reason I pulled back and they just ran the eel. Out it comes, mouth wide open, it reaches the spot, and the jaws slam shut! Those hydraulic jaws would have popped my head like a melon. I was shaking. I was lucky to let them try it first, but it wasn’t just luck. It’s always smart to say, ‘Let’s do a test.’”

  When she first started accompanying her father to the set, Kym would hear remarks like, “‘Richard’s got his “chickie” with him today.’ The crew thought I was my dad’s girlfriend, they didn’t believe I was his daughter. I used to think that was pretty funny.” Richard looked out for his daughter: “I told her what to do with producers or directors who want to cast you on the couch, or the stunt coordinators who want to take you on location—as a location girl. I told her everything that happened and every bit is true. On location, guys will go for it. Some of them were not nice. I told the guys I knew [who] were a bit devious, ‘That’s my daughter, so don’t even try it.’ They heard me.”

  Kym’s mother didn’t want her to do stunts. “I couldn’t blame her,” Kym said. “If I’d been a son it might have been different.” One day, Kym’s mother came to the set of Airwolf (1984–1986) to watch her daughter run through a minefield. Special effects had told Kym where the mines were placed, but once she started running, “I couldn’t remember where all the mines were. One or two caught me by surprise. Suddenly I dived because the big boom was coming.” She disappeared into the smoke, and when she reappeared, she had powder burns from head to toe. She wasn’t hurt because she was wearing the
proper gear, but her mother didn’t know that. “I remember the look on my mom’s face as she said, ‘Don’t ask me to come with you again. I don’t want to know what you’re doing until you are home.’ I understood.”

  Typically, children follow their parents into stunts, but Annie Ellis said, “I didn’t come from your usual stunt family.” Merry and vibrant, Annie planned to be a veterinarian until her brother David, a surfer and motorcycle racer, talked her into trying stunts.4 After that, their dad, Richard, joined them. “Dad was my best friend,” Annie said, “an artist, an architect, a pro surfer, a motorcycle racer, and he was a huge influence on me.”

  As planned, Annie Ellis’s horse rears up on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, but during one take, he fell over on top of her. (Courtesy of Annie Ellis)

  New to stunts but not to horses, Annie doubled Glenn Close in Jagged Edge (1985), a film about an attorney (Close) seduced by her client (played by Jeff Bridges), who is on trial for murder. “He uses horses as foreplay,” and the two of them gallop full speed across a luscious meadow pockmarked with treacherous gopher holes. “When a coordinator asks, ‘Can you ride?’ you better know horses,” Annie warned. “If I had not, tripping on those gopher holes would throw most people off.” During the ride, the two come to a tree that has fallen across the path, and Annie’s horse is supposed to stop and rear up. “I rode two horses” for the stunt, Annie recalled. “Both came off the racetrack, and one loved to jump. A mile away, she’d get ready to jump. There was no way to stop her. I told everyone; they didn’t believe me. Take two, we’re near the tree, I yank her head around, she’s looking at me the way camels do, and even though she can’t see what’s ahead she leaps over the tree! An overhanging branch catches my wig, I’m still holding the reins, my butt comes down behind the saddle, I jump back into it, and she never stopped galloping.”