WATER STUNT MEN RULED OUT OF RISKY SCREEN SEQUENCES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 194, 2 August 1940, Page 6

WATER STUNT MEN RULED OUT OF RISKY SCREEN SEQUENCES

Dummies, with the exception ot Charlie McCarthy, are unpopular in, Hollywood at the moment. In the old days, no action picture was complete without a whole wagon load of dummies. They were thrown from buildings, dumped into rivers, run over by trucks, and strewn around, on battlefields. But those days are gone. There were only two dummies in Samuel Goldwyn's "The Real Glory" and there's a reason. It's the Screen Actor's Guild, Under the Guild con* tract with the studio, dummies arc only used in scenes that involve tremendous risk. The dummies in "T(lic Real Glory" were blown up in a boat; "There were stunt men willing to sit in the boat when we blew it up," said Director Henry Hathaway. '"But we wouldn't let them. We knew they might get hurt." 1 In the river scenes where "bodies" are shown floating over rapids, Hathaway wanted to use dummies, He was afraid someone might be drowned. "We can do it," ; the stunt men told him. "We're expert water workers and there is absolutely no danger." As it turned out, there wasn't. The scenes went through without a hitch. Under the present set-up, if the studio uses a dummy for work that a human can do without undue risk and is Avilling to do, it must pay the human anyway. No one objects to the arrangement because it gives added employment to extra players. Scores of extras in "The Real Glory" played 'dead' for weeks during the filming of the battle scenes. Two Filipino women spent four weeks lying on their facep on the river bank on the jungle set on the back lot. Across the river were two men half-submerged. And beyond them were a good many others sprawled around in the grass, earning seven dollars and fifty cents! a day for not moving a muscle when the camera was turning.