Life of Evel: Evel Knievel

by Stuart Barker

  When the first five buses were lined up for his initial practice leap, Knievel complained they were not close enough together and that he wanted them ‘so close together that the paint would rub off’. The drivers then parked them just eight inches apart but Evel still wasn’t happy until a local friend called Pete Ankney suggested he bring in two fork-lift trucks to lift the buses into place so they were actually touching. Knievel obviously wasn’t taking any chances on this one. As Ankney commented at the time, ‘Eight inches may not sound like much, but when you multiply that 13 times you’re talking about more than eight feet.’

  Unusually, and perhaps showing a new-found caution after one crash too many at Wembley, Knievel continued making practice jumps throughout the week before taking a day out on Friday to celebrate his thirty-seventh birthday. The mayor of Dayton, James H. McGee, presented Knievel with the keys to the city, and Montgomery County officials commissioned a six-foot birthday cake designed to feed 300, which featured 14 buses and a model of Knievel on his bike suspended above them. A reception was held in Courthouse Square where Knievel cut the cake and distributed it to onlookers and officials.

  Knievel explained to gathered reporters that, after a week of practising, he was mentally ready for his record-breaking attempt. ‘I’ve never been in a better frame of mind for a jump than I am now. I was scared to death at the Snake River but I think the greatest thrill I’ve ever had in my 10 years of jumping was hearing the countdown by 5-4-3-2-1 and pushing that button.’

  In view of his Wembley disaster, Knievel also explained that he had switched to taller gearing which would allow a greater take-off speed, and that he had extended his approach area by some 85 feet in order to build up as much speed as possible.

  On the morning of 25 October, exactly five months and two days after announcing his retirement at Wembley, Evel Knievel was back in the arena once more and ready to risk everything again. The show kicked off at 2 p.m. with eleven skydivers plummeting 13,500 feet into the arena in the shape of the initials ‘EK’ before hot-air balloons were released and biplanes performed stunts, all adding to the carnival atmosphere. In the arena itself, live bands churned out music and the usual circus-style acts attempted to keep the crowds entertained. As usual, Knievel’s continually growing array of vehicles were on display, this time being joined by a new Formula 1 race car and a ‘crash car’, both full-size versions of the toys which were on sale.

  Despite all the efforts of building a 70,000 capacity arena, only 25,000 spectators turned out on the day, paying $8 a head to watch the jump alone or $12 if they also wanted admission to all the rides in the Family Entertainment Center. It was still a healthy crowd for one man to be able to command but Knievel’s act often suffered on the crowd-pulling front because it was over so quickly. In 1975, $8 was a lot of money for a show that would be over in a few minutes, and more and more people were waking up to the fact.

  Contributing to the lower-than-expected attendance figures was ABC’s decision to show the event live in a one-hour-broadcast special. It was a wise decision on the channel’s part. While just 25,000 turned up to see Knievel in the flesh, an incredible 32 million television viewers switched on at home to watch the comeback of the greatest daredevil of all time. It remains ABC’s highest-ever viewing figure with a 52 per cent audience share. The Snake River Canyon failure had quite obviously been forgotten.

  Those who did make the effort to attend the live show went wild with excitement as Knievel finally entered the arena and made his usual round of wheelies before addressing the audience and explaining his decision to jump again after he had announced his retirement. ‘You can’t be the best in the world and fall off and get up and say, “I quit.” Not if you’re an Evel Knievel you can’t. And I’m not gonna quit that way. I will try it again: if I make it, I’ll continue, if I don’t…if I don’t…I’m gonna pack it all in.’

  Set against a spectacular backdrop of roller coasters and Ferris wheels, Knievel was back where he belonged; back in carnival land, only on a much grander scale than his early county-fair days. For his biggest-ever jump Evel had come full circle, and his son Robbie, now 13 years old, made his real performance debut pulling wheelies round the arena in a miniature pale blue version of his father’s famous suit. Evel rode alongside, his huge cape billowing in the wind, looking more than ever like Elvis Presley on a motorcycle. But Robbie remembers the Kings Island jump for very different reasons. With Evel still in great pain from his Wembley crash, Robbie explained his concern: ‘You know, he was in a lot of pain cos the doctor wouldn’t shoot the Xylocaine into him to numb him up cos he was busted from the jump before. I held his hand while he shot the Xylocaine in himself…so every time he went off that ramp it scared me – it scared me pretty good.’

  Pumped full of Xylocaine to numb the pain signals being emitted from so many parts of his body, Knievel finally made his approach to the ramp that would take him into orbit over 14 ten-foot-wide Greyhound buses. The approach was fast, nearing 100mph, and, as usual, Evel stood on the footrests of his bike just before take-off and eased his body into a semi-standing position to gain better control of the bike in mid-air. Thousands of camera flash-guns exploded in the audience as the deep, guttural roar of the V-twin Harley-Davidson reached a crescendo before the split second when Evel left the ramp. Then, with traction left behind and the rear wheel spinning freely, the revs fell away in an eerie, limp silence as the back end of the bike dipped, as Knievel intended, ready for a rear-wheel landing. As he soared down onto the safety ramp covering the fourteenth bus the bike was approaching the near-vertical, and it looked for one chilling moment like Evel was going to wipe out again. Instead, the rear wheel slammed hard down onto the landing ramp followed almost impossibly swiftly by the front wheel. The crowd erupted. He had done it.

  Speeding out of the arena, Knievel glanced back towards the ramp, apparently unable to believe he had actually bridged the gap; that at 37 years old, battered and broken, he had jumped 133 feet – further than ever before – and executed a safe, almost perfect landing. There was life in the old dog yet.

  While he may have travelled a further distance in the air at Caesar’s Palace (141 feet), his crash-landing back then meant there was little glory in the achievement. After all, as Evel himself said, anyone can jump a motorcycle, the problems begin when you try to land it. Jubilant and more than a little relieved, Evel rode back into the arena and up the landing ramp to accept the wild applause of his audience; of those who still believed that they were looking at the last of the gladiators; a man whose spirit simply refused to be broken; a man who defied age, gravity and pain. But his post-jump speech to the crowd revealed that, in a sense, his spirit was broken, or at least not as wildly optimistic as it had been hitherto. Sounding emotionally drained, he announced, ‘I am going to continue to perform throughout this country and throughout the world, and I hope that I’ll meet success while doing it, but as far as I’m concerned, I have jumped far enough.’

  It was only in later years that Knievel admitted he had actually wanted to retire after Kings Island. ‘I really wanted to quit then. It was the first jump that I made that was successful where I thought, “Yeah, I might hang it up – I did this.” But, of course, I went on from there.’

  Knievel had admitted that this was the end of the line, at least as far as distance went; that his bike ‘didn’t have wings’ after all, and that he had to be wise enough to know when to stop before he really did kill himself.

  Once, while en route to a performance in Austin, Texas, Knievel had heard two locals talking about him in a Mexican café in Deming, New Mexico. They were – unwittingly – grossly exaggerating Knievel’s achievements while fully believing they spoke the truth. Evel had jumped 152 cars, not to mention the Grand Canyon itself. Unrecognised, Knievel listened in and realised that the myth and legend which had grown up around him had got out of hand; that people fully expected the impossible from him and that his real achievements were always goi
ng to pale in comparison. ‘I’m going to get killed,’ he thought, ‘living up to what people want me to be. I’ve got to quit.’

  The other major problem was that in a very real way he could never actually win, at least among the cynics of the world. If he wiped out he was no good; he didn’t make the jump stick. Yet if he did land safely then the jump must have been too simple. A journalist covering the Kings Island show expressed this very opinion all too clearly. Bucky Albers wrote of the event, ‘The descending ramp was built in such a manner that it began with plywood stretching from the centre of the tenth bus. So, despite the implication that he would crash if he did not clear 14 buses, Knievel had to clear only 10 to come to a safe landing.’

  Evel was extremely relieved to be able to admit to himself that the big jumps were over; that the big risks were over. ‘After missing 13 buses in London, England and then coming to Kings Island and jumping 14, don’t think I wasn’t nervous. There was never anybody gladder in the world than me when that jump was over.

  ‘People said I wasn’t scared before a jump; that’s bullshit, I was scared. I’d have a shot of Wild Turkey whisky before each jump to calm myself. I’d get this knot in my stomach and this lump in my throat every time. People who go around wearing “No Fear” T-shirts now are full of shit.’

  Fear or no fear, Knievel would continue to perform as he had stated, but his performances in the future would be more like exhibitions mixed with personal appearances, with much shorter jumps being attempted. His philosophy from that point on was to ‘Put on the shows and try and provide the best entertainment possible and try and stay alive and not get hurt any more.’

  This statement showed a fundamental lack of understanding as to why people flocked to see him jump in the first place. Was it any surprise that Knievel’s popularity went into decline when he had actually publicly admitted that he wouldn’t be taking risks any more? That he wouldn’t be making long jumps any more? And that he wasn’t prepared to get hurt any more? Knievel himself had long been aware that a certain percentage of his audience came to see him crash, get hurt or even die. To deny them any of those possibilities was to deny them a show. It was tantamount to Frank Sinatra announcing that, while he would still be staging concerts, he wouldn’t actually be singing any more, just making a walk-on public appearance. Effectively, Knievel’s various statements to this effect marked the beginning of the end of his career.

  But while his career as a serious stunt performer may have been all but over, Knievel was still popular enough to attract the attentions of Hollywood, and he spent much of 1976 preparing for, and filming, the second Knievel-related film, Viva Knievel! In the hoopla following Snake River, Warner Bros. had signed Evel to a three-picture deal, and the first was to be Viva. It was not to be an updated biography following on from George Hamilton’s 1971 Evel Knievel movie, but rather a fictional action-adventure with Evel starring as himself. His list of co-stars was fairly impressive, if at times miscast. Most notably miscast was legendary dancer Gene Kelly starring as Knievel’s alcoholic mechanic, but other star names in more suitable roles included supermodel Lauren Hutton as the love interest, with roles also for Leslie Nielsen (later of Naked Gun fame), Red Buttons and Cameron Mitchell. Frank Gifford, Evel’s long-standing crony from ABC, also made a cameo as himself.

  The rather lame plot (although to be fair it was like Hamilton’s movie, fairly representative of many films being made at the time) revolved around Evel trying to foil drug smugglers who were using replicas of his trucks and trailers to bring cocaine from Mexico into the US. While Knievel played himself he was not permitted to perform any jumps for the movie for obvious reasons: if he was hurt it could cost the studio hundreds of thousands of dollars in downtime. Warner Bros. turned to another respected stuntman, Gary Davis, to stand in for their star performer. Davis explained why Knievel had to take a back seat when it came to the riding segments in the movie: ‘Evel Knievel was the star of the movie, he was not Evel Knievel the daredevil. If, for any reason, Evel would have gotten harmed…all he needed to do was catch a cold and it shuts down the show. During one of the sequences I was out riding, getting the crowd excited – they [the production team] wanted to shoot the crowd. Evel decided he was gonna come out and entertain too. Something went wrong and he fell off the bike; it flipped over on a wheelie. That was it. Warner Bros. [had] a lot of money invested in him at that time and they said, “You’re done, you will not ride.” It’s not that he couldn’t have done the stunts, it was that they couldn’t afford to allow him to do it.’

  The film was directed by Gordon Douglas, who had enjoyed considerable success with a string of movies dating back to 1931 and starring such big names as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis. The film’s producer, Irwin Allen, had also enjoyed remarkable success, albeit more recently with smash hits like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.

  Initial interest in Viva Knievel! seemed encouraging as Evel was swamped by fans during filming in Los Angeles. Things eventually got so out of hand that Warner Bros. had to post a line of security guards around the perimeter of the East Los Angeles College Stadium where some of the opening scenes would take place. Allen was quoted in the local press as saying he had never seen anything like it in all the movies he had made, even when he was working with top-flight movie stars.

  The movie had a rather modest budget of $5 million (compared to the $15 million spent on The Towering Inferno for example) and was scripted by Norman Katkov and Antonio Santilla, although Knievel claims to have had a hand in the process. It would certainly seem so, given that the movie seemed at times to serve solely as a vehicle for portraying Evel as a nice guy; one who visited kids in hospital and dished out – surprise, surprise – his own Ideal Knievel toys; and one who would always take a stand against drugs. Ideal toys also benefited from the movie tie-in by releasing a wind-up version of the film’s futuristic bike, the Strato Cycle.

  His involvement in Viva Knievel! took up much of 1976, and when Evel wasn’t on set he’d enjoy hanging around Hollywood’s bars, mingling with the rich and famous, just as he enjoyed doing in Las Vegas. Knievel’s favourite LA bar was Filthy McNasty’s, which, like so many other bars and clubs in the city, had a neon sign outside advertising the evening’s entertainment. What distinguished it from all the others was that when Knievel was holding court the sign outside proudly announced ‘NOW – Drunk Inside – Evel Knievel’. Unlike some stars, who go to exceptional lengths to protect their privacy, Knievel announced his presence wherever he went and thrived on being the centre of attention. While filming Viva Knievel!, Evel stayed in the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Hollywood where he was next door to Kojak actor Telly Savalas, whom he considered a good friend. ‘We were room-mates for a couple of years at the Universal. We used to drink together, play golf together at the Lakeside Country Club. He was a great guy, we had a lot of fun together.’

  Knievel had, in fact, spent much of the last few years living in the hotel where he could mingle with Hollywood’s finest, and, along with his hotel suite in Las Vegas, he counted the Universal as very much a home from home.

  With Linda back in Butte looking after their three children as usual, Evel was free to enjoy himself in any way he saw fit, and LA offered as many temptations as Las Vegas, if not more. But the fine foods and increasing dependence on alcohol were taking their toll on the once well-built figure of Evel: he was getting fat, and by the time October rolled round he hadn’t performed a jump for a whole year. He was becoming dangerously idle. With money continuing to be a problem, Knievel announced he was going to don his jumpsuit yet again and this time it would be in Worcester, Massachusetts on 11 October 1976, but, just as he had stated back in Kings Island, he wasn’t jumping for distance, just for show.

  Despite initially promising to jump 13 vans, Evel broke his word on the day, claiming there wasn’t enough room for such a leap. Instead he performed two jumps over a mere four vans, three jumps over seven vans,
and one not-so-climactic jump over ten vans – a distance of just over 70 feet. The only real bonus for those watching was that Robbie Knievel, now aged 14, made his first ever public jumping appearance instead of just popping wheelies in his father’s wheel tracks. Even so, only 9,000 people turned out to see the show, a sure sign that Knievel’s popularity was on the wane and that he was losing his credibility.

  Had he hung up his flared jumpsuit and cape after Kings Island he could have retired with his reputation intact, notwithstanding the lingering Snake Canyon critics. At that event he had pulled off his biggest-ever jump masterfully in front of record television audiences and a healthy live gate, and had introduced his son into the arena he himself had created. In fact, keen to forget his final few disappointing appearances after this jump, Knievel has in recent years often cited Kings Island as his last performance.

  The obvious next step for Knievel would have seemed to be in guiding and managing Robbie and capitalising on his famous name in whichever non-jumping way he could. With some wise investments he might even have managed to find some long-term financial security, but it was not to be.

  Evel had originally intended to retire after his Snake River jump, but had carried on when the pay packet for that event had not turned out to be what he had expected. Then, after his Wembley crash, he actually did announce his retirement, albeit in a rather affected state of mind. He had once again considered packing it all in after Kings Island, but, as far as he was concerned, it was not an option available to him for one simple reason: he owed too much money and jumping was the only way he could think of to make more of it, even if his fear of dying was becoming more acute with age. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he admitted. ‘I get very nervous and afraid when I perform now and I’d like to retire. The older we get the more our way of thinking changes. No man likes to admit that he isn’t as good as he once was and it’s hard to quit any business. But when I get hurt now I don’t heal up like I used to. And I fear dying. But I can’t quit because the banks won’t let me. I borrowed a lot of money from them and I’ve got to pay them back. I’ve got a lot of obligations and investments. People went into investments with me because of my earning power. If I didn’t need to earn big money I’d retire. If I’d bought just one less Learjet or one less yacht I’d have another million or so in the bank and I wouldn’t have to keep on working.’