Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 79

'J SCREEN RADIO WEEKLY V.7'a;.,;A,4J.- inn ii Kin .1 ii .1,, .11 il ii ii 4 AAwiAl' mWmm, ISA I. Wliiin tAi Mir A'. VVr in in MUmUM. HA Hollywood's stunt girls-ihey risk their necks to do difficult feats for the stars. No wonder they're fatalists, two of the best are Mary Wiggin (upper left) and Betty Danko (above).

stage, bf course, and. as the car sank to the bottom of the the camera recorded the girl's struggle to get free and come to the surface. The tank was built of glass. I drove the car over and it turned a flip-flop and sank like a rock. When I tried to get free and come to the surface, I found that my hair had caught in a bit of twisted steel.

"The camera crew was paying no at-'tention as I struggled to myself, thinking it was part of my act." I reached the point where I could hold my breath two seconds longer. With a desperate effort, 1 tore the strand of hair from my scalp and came up." Miss Rush once doubled for Anna Q. t'l 1 i tITTtt "Considering the risks we take, our pay is small and few stunt girls or men have ever been able to save enough to enjoy old age that is those who have lived to reach old age." Many girls in Hollywood call themselves stunt girls, but the trained, daring heroines who are really stunt girls can be counted on the fingers. They include Betty Danko, Lor-etta Rush, Mary Wiggin, lone Reed, Irene Goodwin and Elsie Ware. Most of them make specialty of a certain type of stunt.

lone Reed and Irene Goodwin are both fine and daring riders. Mary Wiggin is an expert high diver, but she will cept an assignment for almost any stunt on the calendar. She, has doubled" for most of the stars in pictures. Fate wrote a strange chapter in the life of Mary Wiggin. At the Chicago fair she did fire dives from a fifty-foot-high platform into a tank with less than three feet of water in it.

On the way down she passed through' a fire-hoop which set her clothes afire. After the fair she stopped off in Florida, dived from a three-foot springboard down into 10 feet of water and her back was badly injured. She drove her car, after that, to Hollywood and wrecked two cars in pictures. One morning she could not get out of bed. An X-ray disclosed that her back had been broken in that dive.

She spent the next six months in a hospital bed, in a plaster cast iNiisson in a sueni picture, lowing Gold." Those" who saw the girl they supposed to be Miss Nitsson dive into a river, of yiarning oil were watching Loretta Rush, one of Hollywood's ace stunt girls, at the job of earning her precarious living. Girls who specialize in horse work or trick riding also face death with the same fatalism which characterizes of these darj-devil heroines. Ioe Reed, Irene Goodwin and Elsie Ware have all taken more than their share of desperate chances and have more than once looked By J. Eugene Ghnsman THERE is a grinding crash as the racing car strikes a stone wall, turns over and over and comes to a halt, on its side, a mass of wreckage. A moment later you see a he-man star tear away the wreckage and take the unconscious heroine into his manly arms.

She smiles, opens her eyes and their lips meet in a passionate, kiss. Perhaps you wonder how that scene was made so that the beautiful heroine did not have a misplaced hair, as she lay in the hero's arms? That scene and every other thrill you see in a motion picture, where a lovely' girl is in danger, is made by one of Hollywood's forgotten heroines, doubling for the star. She does not, let it be understood, double for the star because the star lacks courage. She does it because should she be maimed or killed, it will make little or no difference in the cost of the picture. If the star tried to wreck that car and suffered even a split lip, the cost of delayed production would mount into thousand of dollars.

Using a stunt girl is insurance for the studios. Beautiful feminine stars are expensive and stunt girls come in' wood at just over a dime a dozen. But let's let lovely little Betty Danko, "i who supports herself and her mother by risking her life almost daily, tell you how it feels to be a walking insurance policy, human dummy. She has done every dangerous and daring stunt that a director ever devised to add a spine-chilling thrill to a picture. Betty is beautiful enough to be a star in her own right, but it's a million to one she never will be.

"TyPED as a stunt girl, I am virtually doomed to spend the rest of my picture life accumulating a large variety of cuts and bruises," she says. "Even when I get a bit to do, there is always a fall, a dive or a car skid to go with it. My specialty is doing falls and 111 try to tell you how I earn a living for myself and my mother. "I have, at Various times, fallen back ward, feet first into water, ditches and nets, over chairs and tables, from the tops of pianos, out of high windows, through trap-doors, down laundry chutes and out of bed. I have driven cars at high speed through stop signals and once rode in an Austin, being pulled backward by a big truck, through on of the busiest traffic intersections in the world, Western and Wil-shire Boulevards, in Los Angeles.

"I have ridden mad elephants, wild horses, worked with bears, goats, pigs, dogs, and been chased into a mill pond by a donkey. I bare been chased around a landing field by a supposedly wild airplane and have, in turn, chased a plane. I once had to lie as if unconscious and not move eveaan eyelid, while a fire, fed by gasoline, roared a few inches away from my body and face. 1 HATE water work and cannot swim a stroke. Yet I have taken canoes through rough rapids, turned over sailboats at sea and been drowned for art's sake at least a hundred times.

I am always complimented on my drowning scenes: I suppose I usually miss really doingit by a hair. Afl once had to fall, feet from a high window, holding a dummy policeman in my arms. When I started the jump, I had my arms around the my's neck, but when I landed I had him only by one knee. tried to twist and let the dummy break ipy fall, but his feet were loaded and I lost my balance. "There is never a dull moment in the life of a stunt girl.

Still, "I enjoy most of it, I do not know why I became a stunt girl, for I wanted to grow up to be a policewoman, a cowgirl or a "We risk being crippled for life every time we do a stunt. The slightest injury to the spine has meant a wheelchair for life for more than one of my "have doubled for almost every feminine star in pictures including Joan Crawford, Maureen O'Sullivan, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Elissa Landi, Blanche Yurka, Madge Evans, Binnie Barnes, Marie Prevost and too many others to mention here. It's a great life, if you don't weaken. CASE of injury St. Peter in the face with a laugh.

"Every stunt man or woman I know," said Betty Danko, "is a fatalist. How could they go on with their work, if they were not? If your number is up, that's that and if it isn't, you can walk away from even the most dangerous stunt with a grin. We people who take desperate chances to earn a living will never live in a Beverly Hills mansion or drive a Rolls-Royce. There is no future worth thinking of ahead of us. The work is a terrible strain, both mentally and physically, and you must know your business if you are ever to hold your grandchildren on our knee.

"There is even a trick to doing a short fall that not a star in the business could do without breaking a few bones. "We are fighting now, the men and women who do stunts, for greater recognition. Perhaps we will get it Meanwhile we will go on, taking bumps, risking a wheel-chair and laughing at life." while doing a stunt these dare-devil girls have no recourse. The state law provides that they receive 25 a week, for the time they are unable to work, but that is their only compensation. Should they kill a pedestrian while driving a car at 60 miles an hour in crowded traffic, they are liable to manslaughter charges.

Loretta Rush tells of one close shave which she looked death in the face. "There was a scene in which the heroine was supposed to drive her car off the end of a pier and into the lake. The scene was shot on a studio sound.