Hollywood Hoofbeats

by Petrine Day Mitchum

  Dear John was also taught to sit on his haunches like a dog, a trick he would perform on his own, long after he was retired to pasture. A powerful jumper, Dear John could clear teams of horses, wagons, and huge stone walls that scared Slim to confront. But he knew that if Dear John went at an obstacle, he could clear it. If the horse refused, it was because he knew he couldn’t make it, and Slim trusted Dear John’s decision. The two developed more than an understanding; they had an uncanny rapport and seemed to communicate telepathically.

  By the end of his stint in Rex Allen films, Dear John had become so famous in Hollywood that Slim began getting calls for the horse. The actor refused to let anyone else ride Dear John and insisted on being hired to handle him as well.

  Slim retired Dear John to a pasture owned by veterinarian Joe Hird, in Bishop, California, in 1964. He visited the horse frequently but had difficulty catching him as John was afraid he would have to go back to work. One day, however, when Slim and Rex Allen went to see Dear John, Slim was able to hop on his old pal bareback and cued him to buck. Dear John sent him flying, but Slim landed happy. Instead of running away as was his custom, Dear John rested his head on Slim’s shoulder affectionately. Several years later, Slim awoke in the middle of the night knowing his horse had gone. According to his wife, Maggie, he sat bolt upright in bed and said, “John’s dead.” A few days later, he got the confirmation call from Joe Hird, who had been unable to break the news at first. Dear John had passed away the night Slim received his last message. He was thirty years old.

  You can almost hear Slim Pickens whoop for joy as Dear John puts some sky between them and the wagon in this publicity shot.

  A little rough around the edges, Slim Pickens and Dear John are visual foils for the dapper Rex Allen and his stunning Koko in 1953’s Iron Mountain Trail.

  Brave buckaroo Slim Pickens hangs on as Dear John does what he does best.

  4. Unsung Horse Heroes and Humane Advances

  “If a dancer was forced to dance by whip and spikes, he would be no more beautiful than a horse trained under similar conditions.”

  —Xenophon, 400 bc

  Opposite: Jack Williams prepares to hit the ground as his spectacular mare Coco performs the pirouette fall that made her famous in Border River (1951).

  Star performers such as Tony, Trigger, and Champion were rightfully treated like gold. While every precaution was taken to ensure the well-being of these valuable horses, their lesser-known peers were often forced to perform dangerous stunts that could leave them dazed, injured, or dead. These willing, unsuspecting, unsung heroes gave their all in the name of exciting action. Social attitudes towards animals were quite different decades ago, and filmmakers’ ethics—and economics—did not always accommodate humane treatment. Audiences were blissfully unaware of the sorry state of affairs until Errol Flynn, one of the most popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s, spoke out against cruelty to horses. Soon others rallied to the cause of protecting performing animals.

  Today the American Humane Association’s Film and Television Unit works hard to monitor all animal action, but it wasn’t always so. A nonprofit organization founded in 1877 to protect the welfare of children and animals, the American Humane Association first became involved with Hollywood in 1940 after a series of publicized equine fatalities. The association outlawed inhumane practices and encouraged filmmakers to use trained stunt horses. It even celebrated such performers with their own awards. In the mid-1960s, a power shift in the film industry undermined American Humane’s authority, and the result was more injuries and fatalities to horses. After almost two decades of frustration, American Humane established a new alliance with Hollywood in the 1980s. In 1988, American Humane published its Guidelines for Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media for the protection of all animal actors, still considered the industry standard. Today, computer effects and advanced editing techniques offer further protection to performing animals, but the need for vigilance remains.

  Unaware of the perils ahead, hundreds of horses eagerly gallop in formation for the infamous “charge of the 600” in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936).

  Stuntman George Williams’s Goldie was trained to take this fall in The Charge of the Light Brigade.

  Humane advocate Errol Flynn leads The Charge of theLight Brigade, 1936.

  Harrowing Times for Our Heroes

  Over the decades, countless battle and chase sequences have depicted horse after horse biting the dust. With rare exceptions, most early equine actors were tricked into the stunts. Pits were dug and disguised so that galloping horses would simply tumble into them. The controversial Running W created spectacular somersault falls. Wires attached to a horse’s forelegs were threaded through a ring on the cinch and secured to buried dead weights. When the horse ran to the end of the wires, his forelegs were yanked out from under him.

  Master stuntman Yakima Canutt was determined to make a safer Running W. Canutt engineered a new Running W so the wires, threaded through his invention, the “W” Ring, which attached to a special cinch, would break before the horse hit the ground. Not only did this innovation reduce the force of the pull by half, but it also freed the horse quickly. On location of the 1940 film Virginia City, directed by Michael Curtiz, in which Canutt doubled Errol Flynn, he staged a demonstration of his improved Running W for the two officers of the American Humane Association assigned to monitor the picture’s action. After preparing the ground so it would be soft for the landing and making sure any rocks in the shot were rubber props, Canutt safely performed the stunt, and filming proceeded without incident. In his autobiography, Canutt proudly claimed, “I have done some three hundred Running Ws and never crippled a horse.” He admitted, however, that once a horse got wise to the stunt, he soured on performing. Doubling his friend John Wayne in Dark Command (1940), Canutt attempted a Running W with an experienced horse. When the horse got within several feet of the prepared falling site, he stopped and lay down.

  Yakima Canutt’s designed Running “W” equipment was more humane and safer than the original equipment used by filmmakers to create spectacular falls among movie horses.

  Not all early filmmakers had the knowledge or desire to protect horses from the hazards of the original Running W, however. In fact, director Michael Curtiz was oblivious to the dangers in staging the action in an earlier Errol Flynn movie, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936). The second unit director, B. Reeves “Breezy” Eason, was largely responsible for the infamous charge sequence, for which adequate safety precautions were simply not taken. Though at least one trained falling horse, Goldie, ridden by his stuntman owner, George Williams, worked in the sequence, there were just not enough trained horses available. Some 125 horses were rigged with old-style Running Ws for the climactic scene. One of the stunt riders was Jack Montgomery, who first got a taste of trip-wired falls working for Broncho Billy Anderson. Sickened by the resultant carnage of the charge, Montgomery estimated that twenty-five horses were either killed in action or destroyed after filming because of broken legs. Scores more horses and riders received serious injuries. Errol Flynn was furious and went public with his outrage. It took a star of Flynn’s magnitude to focus producers’ attention on the treatment of performing animals, but it would still be several years before the public joined his cry and Running Ws were banned.

  Another potentially fatal device was the tilt chute. A curtain often disguised the entrance to the chute, or a horse was blindfolded or blinkered to coerce him to enter. The floor of the chute was a greased and slanted metal ramp that sent the horse flying, usually off a cliff into water. A version of the tilt chute, more like a teeter-totter, produced the same result. Occasionally, the outcome was a broken neck, but a quick cut to the hero swimming out of the river on a fresh horse with similar markings left the audience none the wiser.

  Different from traditional blinkers, movie blinkers featured patches of padded leather with eyes painted on them. They were hinged in the middle, held together by a small pi
n, and attached to the bridle. A piece of filament ran from the pin to the reins and was tied high up on the horse’s neck. The blinkers were used to keep a horse from shying during a variety of stunts, such as when a cowboy jumped from a height onto the back of the horse. When the stuntman hit the saddle and grabbed the reins, the pin would release the blinkers so the horse could see. Blinkers were also used in dangerous dives to keep a horse literally in the dark until it was too late for him to turn back.

  In the 1939 Tyrone Power film Jesse James, two horses, ridden by stuntman Cliff Lyons, were killed in spectacular 75-foot jumps into treacherous white water. It has often been reported that the horses were forced into chutes to make them jump, but the late Cliff Lyons told his colleague Tap Canutt, the stuntman son of Yakima Canutt, that the horses were simply blinkered and ridden over the cliff. The result is a few shocking seconds of film, clearly depicting a hideously contorted horse tumbling through the air. Mr. Lyons was paid a then record $2,350 fee for the jumps. The horses paid with their lives.

  A particularly brutal Running W stunt in Cecil B. DeMille’s Northwest Mounted Police claimed two more horses the same year. This time the public became aware of the fatalities in both films and protested loudly.

  in an early Republic Western, stuntman Cliff Lyons waits for the right moment to jump to safety, leaving the horses to take their chances of surviving the wreck. Their fate is unknown.

  American Humane to the Rescue

  As a result of the public outcry, the American Humane Association’s head, Richard C. Craven, worked with the so-called Hays Office of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (created to establish moral codes for the film industry) to set guidelines for protecting performing animals. In 1940, the first American Humane monitors, now called certified safety representatives, stepped onto a film set. This period of safety continued until 1966, when more permissive social mores led to the abolishment of the Hays Office. Unfortunately, while the move resulted in greater freedom for filmmakers, it placed the protection of performing animals in jeopardy. Although American Humane continued to push for humane treatment of animal actors, industry compliance was voluntary and inconsistent. As filming trends demanded more realism, action often became more dangerous. The years between 1966 and 1980 were sometimes harrowing for animal actors, especially horses, the ones most often placed at risk.

  Director Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 Western The Wild Bunch contains a scene that would be filmed quite differently in today’s age of computer effects: a group of five stuntmen on horseback are standing on a wooden bridge spanning a river when the bridge explodes, sending the whole kit and caboodle into the drink. Fortunately, there were some expert stuntmen on the show. Tap Canutt and his brother Joe, along with Bill Hart, Bill Shannon, and Jimmy Shepard, worked in the risky scene. They prepped the horses to get them used to explosives and made sure that safety precautions were taken—including convincing the director not to use a second charge of dynamite in the water. Tap Canutt put it to Peckinpah this way: “Sam, if that dynamite goes off one second late we’ll all be under water, which will kill five stuntmen and five horses. Now, that probably won’t bother you near as much as your shot being completely hidden by a wall of water.” Apparently that got the director’s attention, and the underwater dynamite was removed.

  The horses in the stunt were Mexican animals, acquired on location. The cowboy stuntmen preferred to use local horses because they were accustomed to the terrain and knew how to avoid the plentiful piercing cholla cactus. In addition to conditioning the horses to loud noises, extra precautions were taken before the bridge stunt. Rubber foam pads were used instead of saddle blankets, which would have become waterlogged. Open “L step” stirrups replaced regular ones to prevent the men from getting their feet caught under water.

  The stuntmen were mounted and in position a good half-hour before the explosives detonated. According to Tap Canutt, “Waiting is the worst part of any stunt involving livestock, for when a man gets even a little nervous, the animal senses it and may rear and start jumping around.” However, the horse Tap was astride actually fell asleep. “Once in position on the bridge,” he recalled, “I relaxed my legs and arms and sat perfectly still with the reins loose, watching his head. Pretty soon the little guy’s head started drooping lower and lower until he went to sleep. When the first charges went off, they were to our left and he immediately straightened up and looked in that direction. The next blast was directly below us and he looked down. When the bridge blew, we were in a perfect diving position.” Miraculously, the scene was filmed without any injuries to the men or horses, although Tap admits, “it did get a little dicey with that many men and horses upside down and under water.”

  Not all horses in this time period were so lucky. After several well-publicized tragedies, culminating in the deaths of several animals in 1980’s Heaven’s Gate, including that of a horse who died after his rider was directed to ride over an explosive charge, the Screen Actors Guild and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers granted American Humane oversight authority for animals in film. The guidelines American Humane published in 1988 address such concerns as training methods, hours worked, and health care as well as risks posed by specific action. They are amended as needed to ensure the comfort and safety of animal actors within the changing film industry.

  A stunt horse’s fatal dive in 1939’s Jesse James is the centerpiece of this American Humane Association poster.

  Falling for a Living

  In the early 1940s, American Humane’s certified safety representatives were often a nuisance to directors eager for dramatic action, but with vigilance came a new breed of performer, the specially trained stunt horse. Blessed with marvelous reflexes, the trained falling horse is the most prized of the specialty performers. Famous falling horses such as Cocaine, Coco, Hot Rod, Gypsy, Tadpole, and the Jerry Brown Falling Horse commanded top salaries befitting star athletes. In careers that spanned decades, these horses appeared in picture after picture, often falling multiple times in the same battle sequence, “costumed” as different horses with a paintbrush.

  Trained falling horses perform amid explosive charges in Major Dundee (1965).

  How to Take a Fall

  Falling horses are trained today as they were in past decades, utilizing the same basic techniques devised by ancient armies who downed their horses to create shields. Like all training, teaching a horse to fall requires great patience. Preparation and the right equipment, such as a snaffle bit and western saddle, are key. Before beginning, the trainer softens a landing spot, usually with a mixture of dirt or sand and sawdust.

  The horse is first taught to lie down from a halt. After tying up the animal’s left foreleg, the trainer stands on the left side of the horse and gently pulls him off balance by pulling the right rein over the saddle. It might take thirty minutes to get the horse down the first time, and once he lies down, it is important that he receive a great deal of reassurance and praise so his fear of falling is replaced by confidence. The trainer repeats the process daily until the horse learns the rein cue and no longer needs to have his leg tied. Once he masters step one, he is ready for mounted falls. The trainer repeats the process, first at a halt, then a walk, trot, and canter and finally a gallop—always with the ground properly prepared for soft landings. Of course, the trainer must be an expert at going down with his horse and getting clear of the fall. Special tack is used. Leather-covered soft rubber stirrups are worn on the falling side and on the other side, a regular western or cavalry style stirrup shielded at the toe with leather to prevent the stuntman’s foot from going through and getting caught.

  Horses have different falling styles. According to stuntman and former USC athlete Jack Williams, who learned his craft from his father, George Williams, “It’s a judo throw. But it has to be done in such a way that the horse is not anticipating it, that you catch the horse in the right kind of a stride so that as you pull the horse to the right, he follo
ws his head.” Normally, a horse thrown in this way will land on his side. However, Jack added, “if he’s got a rear in him, he will go up in a pirouette. That was the exciting thing to me, to put something on the screen that looked like the horse exploded: go up on a pirouette, come down and, ideally, go over the top of you. But things don’t always happen that way, so you’re gonna get nailed.” Sometimes a horse will roll over after hitting the ground. In the movie How the West Was Won (1963), there is a breathtaking moment when Williams, portraying an Indian, and his mare Coco are shot down by Gregory Peck’s character. Coco rolls on her back and teeters there for several seconds, finally rolling over the stuntman, who was miraculously unhurt. Contemporary stuntwoman Shelley Boyle, who has done many horse falls, including some in The Horse Whisperer (1998), explains it this way: “Basically, you stay in close to the horse, and they roll over you. It sounds worse than it really is. You want to stay close to the horse because it’s easier to get rolled over than to get stood up on. There’s less damage.”

  Stunt Horses of Yesteryear

  In addition to athletic ability, a falling horse must have other attributes to make it in the movies. As Jack Williams explained, “You have to have a horse with a good disposition, with a little life to him. And you’ve got to have a horse that looks good. You know, like they say with actors, ‘The camera loves ’em.’ The camera has to love the horse.”