The Daredevils of Hollywood
April 25, 1938 – July 22, 1938 · 26 broadcasts
Before the credits rolled for them -- before there were credits at all -- the men and women who took the falls for Hollywood were anonymous. This syndicated 1938 quarter-hour put them front and centre, one at a time, twice a week for thirteen weeks. Each broadcast is named for a working stunt professional and rebuilds a single gag from their career: a burning structure ridden down into the sea, a Model T sheared in half at sixty-five miles an hour, a chariot wreck that ends in a leap onto a moving train, an aeroplane flown off a downtown rooftop. The daredevils were portrayed by a radio company rather than appearing themselves, but the people and the stunts were real, and the series named names at a time when nobody else did. The roster it assembled has aged extraordinarily well. Yakima Canutt, later honoured with an Academy Award for his contribution to stuntcraft, takes a car over a three-hundred-foot cliff. Frank Clarke, who flew as Leutnant von Bruen in Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, puts an aeroplane off an office block. Cliff Lyons, later a second unit director for John Ford and John Wayne, times an exit between two closing locomotives. Frank McGrath, later the cook on Wagon Train, stands under seventy-five thousand gallons of water. All 26 broadcasts survive. Nearly a quarter of them belong to stuntwomen.
Episode Spine
1938
Before the credits rolled for them -- before there were credits at all -- the men and women who took the falls for Hollywood were anonymous. This syndicated 1938 quarter-hour put them front and centre, one at a time, twice a week for thirteen weeks. Each broadcast is named for a working stunt professional and rebuilds a single gag from their career: a burning structure ridden down into the sea, a Model T sheared in half at sixty-five miles an hour, a chariot wreck that ends in a leap onto a moving train, an aeroplane flown off a downtown rooftop. The daredevils were portrayed by a radio company rather than appearing themselves, but the people and the stunts were real, and the series named names at a time when nobody else did. The roster it assembled has aged extraordinarily well. Yakima Canutt, later honoured with an Academy Award for his contribution to stuntcraft, takes a car over a three-hundred-foot cliff. Frank Clarke, who flew as Leutnant von Bruen in Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, puts an aeroplane off an office block. Cliff Lyons, later a second unit director for John Ford and John Wayne, times an exit between two closing locomotives. Frank McGrath, later the cook on Wagon Train, stands under seventy-five thousand gallons of water. All 26 broadcasts survive. Nearly a quarter of them belong to stuntwomen.