Life of Evel: Evel Knievel

by Stuart Barker

  Knievel often referred to himself as ‘the last of the gladiators’, but he had never been more like one than he was now. Here was a man risking his life to win his freedom; his freedom from the very profession he had chosen. The fact that Knievel was also risking his life for financial freedom while gladiators fought for literal freedom mattered not – the principle, and possible outcome of death, was the same. He had fought himself into a corner he couldn’t get out of and his almost desperate confession of fear and concern is all the more touching for that. Like a prostitute trying to buy her way out of the trade, Knievel was going to have to keep on working the streets for the foreseeable future just to be able to survive.

  Two weeks after his Worcester appearance the Knievel roadshow rolled into Seattle for a two-night performance in the city’s new Kingdome. Despite promising he would jump 10 buses at the indoor venue (obviously in an attempt to draw a larger audience), Evel went back on his word again and only jumped seven buses over the two nights, a decidedly unspectacular feat considering he had jumped twice that many at Kings Island just one year before. For devoted fans and those who had never seen Evel in the flesh before, it may have been enough to satisfy, but the non-risky nature of the jumps meant the media were little interested and only 15,000 people showed up at the venue, although ABC did once more cover the jump for television. Significantly, it was to be the last time Knievel would work with ABC and his last time on the network after 17 appearances over the last decade. But there were other television channels and Knievel hooked up with one of them to plan a spectacular new stunt.

  Finally realising that short leaps over a handful of vans or buses were not going to be money-spinners, Knievel resorted to his earlier genius for gimmicks and came up with one of the best of his career when he announced that he would jump over a pool of live sharks. With the smash hit movie Jaws having been released just the year before, shark fever was still consuming the States, just as it was the rest of the world, and Knievel once again showed his marketing genius by cashing in on the fact, even though the sharks in question were relatively harmless lemon sharks rather than the Great White featured in the movie (of which there are none in captivity). While lemon sharks have been known to attack people on rare occasions, the 14 specimens flown in from Marathon in Florida were so heavily sedated that they probably wouldn’t have noticed if Knievel and his Harley-Davidson had plummeted straight into their tank. As one wry observer pointed out, the sharks were probably more scared and in more danger than Knievel was.

  Still, it was a great gimmick which offered plenty of headline-grabbing potential and Knievel’s new television allies, the CBS network, didn’t miss a chance for advance publicity. The jump was to take place inside the Chicago International Amphitheater, which claimed to house the world’s largest saltwater pool, and it would mark Knievel’s first live show on prime-time television as the first in a string of episodes called Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers. Each week, various performers would attempt bizarre and often dangerous stunts in the first part of the show as support acts to Knievel’s headlining performance. On paper at least, the show appeared to offer the perfect way for Knievel to stay in the limelight by performing oddities and novelty jumps without having to take the huge risks inherent with long-distance jumping.

  Despite the more lax attitude to animal rights that existed in the 1970s, there were still certain groups opposed to the jump on the grounds that it was cruel to the sharks – and the evidence supported their fears. Although 14 sharks were captured in Florida for the jump, one died in transit and several others were close to death by the time of the show. Never one to let the facts get in the way of the hype, Knievel boasted that he was going to jump over the world’s largest saltwater tank which would be filled with deadly, man-eating sharks. In reality, the leap would only measure 90 feet, which was far shorter than Knievel was capable of jumping, and the sharks were so drugged and unwell that they represented little more danger than a tank of goldfish.

  But jumping a motorcycle always carries a risk, no matter how safe the leap appears and how experienced the rider is. In this case it was the unforeseen danger of a slippery landing ramp that caused Evel problems. He had decided to make a practice jump on the afternoon before the live special because ‘the jump was so dangerous I couldn’t bring myself to do it cold turkey’. While he easily sailed over the tank of water, Knievel landed on his front wheel, slipped on the upward-reaching ski-jump ramp and smashed into 29-year-old Mobile Television Services cameraman Thomas Green. It was the first time in his career that a bystander had been involved in one of Knievel’s many crashes, and initial reports indicated it was serious. Word started to spread that Green had lost an eye in the incident and those rumours have now entered the Knievel legend and have become accepted as fact, even though contemporary newspaper reports stated that Green was only ‘treated for minor injuries at the hospital and released’.

  Knievel himself was not so lucky. He had broken his right forearm and left collarbone and suffered serious bruising. Speaking from the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, he insisted the jump was doomed to failure in such an enclosed environment. ‘I knew when I saw it all squeezed together that it wasn’t going to work. When we put it all together, the ramp, the tank and the ski slope, it was too cramped.’ And while he claimed the landing ramp was also too steep to be safe he took full responsibility for his failure, claiming, ‘…the pressure started to build up in me’.

  Knievel had originally intended to make the jump at either the Kingdome in Seattle or the Astrodome in Houston, both of which were larger but too cost-prohibitive, given that a tank would have needed to be built in either venue. The crash obviously ruled out Knievel’s headlining performance on his new television show, but at least he had taken the precaution of having his practice run filmed should anything go wrong. ‘I asked for camera coverage because I knew it wouldn’t work and at least they’d have something on film.’

  Unfortunately that something was not enough and both the live and television audiences were grossly disappointed that the star of the show was lying in a hospital bed instead of being out there entertaining them. Knievel spoke to cameras from his hospital bed and the practice crash was shown repeatedly as part of the show, but it was not enough to guarantee the show’s future. Apart from Evel’s absence – which had prompted the 3,000-strong live audience to boo loudly – the show was panned by critics who felt that any live show which risked televising someone being seriously injured or killed was in the utmost bad taste, and all plans for the series were cancelled after critics voted the pilot episode the worst programme of the year.

  The shark jump was to be Knievel’s last high-profile performance, and while he would continue churning out the odd performance over the next few years, none was spectacular enough to merit any kind of media hype or attention.

  Sadly for Knievel, who desperately needed to find a less risky profession as the years caught up with him, his film, Viva Knievel!, bombed at the box office when it was released in Los Angeles on 13 July 1977. For Knievel it led to a lasting resentment of Hollywood, which he described as ‘…that place on earth that God will insert the tube if he ever decides to cleanse the world by giving it an enema’. The other two Knievel movies were, unsurprisingly, cancelled and Knievel never worked in films again, although he did go on to star as himself in an episode of the massively popular series The Bionic Woman in November 1977.

  Knievel was becoming little more than a carnival act, living off his famous name and performing well within his capabilities. But while he was as good as washed up professionally, he was still capable of making worldwide headline news; though this time for all the wrong reasons.

  11

  Hear no Evel, See no Evel, Speak no Evel

  ‘Skinny little, rotten little bastard. I shoulda killed the little prick.’

  Sheldon Saltman was not one of Evel Knievel’s favourite people. A Hollywood promoter, he worked with Knievel on the Snake Ri
ver Canyon jump and was by his side throughout the 62-city promotional tour leading up to the event itself. It was during this time that he gathered information through personal experience to write a book called Evel Knievel on Tour, and in August of 1977 it was published. Evel was not at all amused by it. ‘He said I was a drug-taker and that I hated my mother. He said I’d fucked every girl in Butte, Montana. My kids even had to quit high school over that book. And it broke my mother’s heart. I’ve never taken a drug unless it was prescribed by a doctor. That guy was just a filthy, stinkin’ little liar.’

  In truth, while Saltman (along with co-author Maury Green) did not paint a particularly glamorous picture of Knievel, he didn’t actually reveal anything which avid readers of newspapers and magazine articles about Evel would not have already known. He detailed Knievel’s heavy drinking habits, which were well known to all despite Evel’s constant ‘do as I say and not as I do’ pre-jump speeches; he told of Evel’s use of painkillers and tranquillisers, which was to be expected of someone who had suffered as much pain as Knievel, and none of the substances was illegal anyhow. As for Knievel’s womanising, while he may not have managed to sleep with every girl in Butte, Montana he had made no secret of the hundreds of women he had slept with over the years, and therefore had little right to complain when someone else committed this fact to print. And while Evel cursed Saltman for saying he hated his mother, all Saltman actually said was that Evel had refused to stay overnight in Denver on one occasion because his mother lived there. There may have been any number of reasons for Evel wishing to avoid his mother at that particular time which had nothing to do with ‘hating’ her.

  Knievel’s outrage was a typical overreaction on his part and may have had more to do with the rumours that he had initially cooperated on the book but had fallen foul of either the publishers or Saltman himself and now stood to lose out financially. Whatever the case, little more would have been heard of the matter had Evel not decided to administer his own justice – Butte style.

  Saltman at this point was vice president of the Fox Telecommunications Group, and on 21 September Evel tracked him down to the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot in Los Angeles. An accomplice, who Knievel always refused to name, then grabbed hold of Saltman (who later claimed there were two accomplices) while Evel repeatedly beat both his arms with a baseball bat. The beating was so fierce that it left Saltman with a compound break (where the bone breaks through the skin) to his left arm and a broken right wrist, along with the expected bruises, aches and pains. Saltman’s left arm was so badly broken it required surgery to insert a metal plate to piece it back together.

  But if it was Butte justice in Evel’s eyes, it was Butte justice with a difference – two (possibly even three) against one was not accepted in Knievel’s hometown. Knievel has always insisted that he needed help because both his arms were in plaster, but since his last recorded jump was over the tank of sharks in Chicago eight months previously, this does not stand up. To further justify his actions, Evel also said the accomplice was necessary so that he could ‘very carefully’ break Saltman’s arms without missing completely and killing the hapless promoter. And the reason for wanting to so carefully break Saltman’s arms? ‘So he don’t write any more goddamn books.’

  The moment may have proved satisfying for Knievel, but even by his standards he must have known that this time he had overstepped the mark. While he himself viewed broken limbs as little more than an inconvenience, and while he had every right to mangle his own limbs at will, the law took a very different view when it came to wilfully breaking someone else’s, as Evel became all too aware.

  Leaving the scene of the crime with his unnamed accomplice(s) – and leaving Saltman in a great deal of agony – Knievel made straight for the West Los Angeles Police Station to turn himself in. He had known the consequences of his actions before tracking down Saltman and was fully prepared to pay the price. After being charged with assault with a deadly weapon he was released on $1,000 bail and even found it within himself to joke with the press that ‘I’ve jumped everything else, but I won’t jump bail.’

  But beneath the bravado Knievel must have known his life was spinning out of control. Overweight and approaching 40, his career had practically halted with the disastrous shark-pool affair and now he was facing a possible custodial sentence. But whatever his true feelings, he still had to live up to the image of Evel Knievel, and Evel Knievel could not show any signs of weakness, be it in the face of danger and pain or in the face of the judicial system. Yet he had no regrets about his actions and if anything wished he had gone even further, saying Saltman was ‘…a filthy little leprechaun user of people. Skinny little, rotten little bastard. I shoulda killed the little prick.’ In a more humorous outburst Knievel said, ‘If I catch him in Los Angeles I’m gonna slap him so hard they’ll pick him up for speeding in San Francisco. That’s how hard I’m gonna hit him.’

  Three weeks after the assault, Knievel appeared before Los Angeles County Superior Court on 12 October 1977 after reportedly having drunk half a bottle of Wild Turkey, which was considerably more than he used to consume before a jump and a real indicator of just how nervous he actually felt about the whole legal process. The judge was forced to grant an overnight delay since Knievel and his lawyer, Paul Caruso, could not agree on how to plead. Knievel, still feeling he had done the right thing, wanted to plead guilty, while Caruso wanted to plead not guilty. True to form, Knievel sacked Caruso and defended himself, pleading guilty and insisting he had done the right thing and could still count on the support of his family and friends back in Butte because he had been honest and admitted to his crime.

  It may have been how things were done in Butte, but, unfortunately for Evel, it’s not how things were done in Los Angeles, as Judge Edward Rafeedie explained. ‘We long ago abandoned frontier justice in California. No affront justifies such retaliation. It sets a terrible example.’ Rafeedie sentenced Evel to six months in Los Angeles County Jail and ordered three years probation (Knievel often boasted that he was sentenced to three years but only served six months). His sentence would start in one week’s time. On leaving the courthouse, Knievel addressed the gathered media who finally had a new and sensational angle on the stuntman they had become progressively bored with. But there was to be no avalanche of sound bites from the usually quotable Knievel on this occasion, only a solemn acceptance of his sentence. ‘I only have one thing to say about this day in court. That judge is a good judge and he’s a fair judge. I have nothing more to say.’

  The judge had recommended that Knievel be given work duties on weekdays but should return to the prison each night and at weekends. It didn’t seem too harsh a deal and in fact there were many who complained that he had been shown preferential treatment because of his celebrity status.

  Knievel didn’t care and, as always, found a positive side to his situation on which to capitalise. With the spotlight fixed firmly back on him, he used the week before he was due to start his sentence to announce the most outrageous stunt of his career. Evel arranged a press conference at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Hollywood – where he was still living – to announce the details. He would be strapped to the underside of an aeroplane flying at 30,000 feet and would release himself with the intention of hitting one of 13 massive bales of hay placed in the car park of a Las Vegas casino – without a parachute. With hindsight it seems too ridiculous for words but Evel at least appeared to be taking the plan seriously and even displayed some detailed drawings of himself strapped to the undercarriage of an aeroplane.

  Ridiculously far-fetched the plan may have seemed, but, given the fact that Knievel had actually gone ahead and attempted the canyon jump when many thought it was suicidal, there was a growing sense that Knievel might just actually be mad enough to attempt this one too. He boasted of having signed up a veteran World War II bomber pilot who would fly the plane, while he himself would have a homing device surgically implanted in his chest to help guide him to o
ne of the hay bales. Knievel drew further gasps and looks of utter disbelief when he announced he would voluntarily have his spleen – one of the body’s vital organs – removed, because it could rupture upon landing, though why he only considered that his spleen could be damaged and not his head, neck, back, or any other part of his body was anyone’s guess.

  Again, Evel announced that this jump would mark his retirement, and again he promised it would be a massive money-spinner which would net him around $20 million. He set the date for 4 July 1978 and headed off to jail. At least the media would have some fuel to keep the Knievel name going for the six months he would be absent. In the event, Knievel’s sanity was never put to the test as the Las Vegas Gaming Commission threatened to slap a restraining order on Knievel as soon as they got wind of the plan. Las Vegas didn’t need a public suicide on its hands.

  Knievel remained convinced the stunt could have worked with the help of the US Army’s Golden Knights parachute team. ‘The Golden Knights were gonna fall right in with me to about 1,000 feet on a laser beam that was being shot [upwards] from the middle of the haystacks, and then let me go in, but I was gonna come all the way down with oxygen and no parachute, just free-falling. And believe me, someday that will be done. It will be done.’