Harvey Parry

From the beginning Ford cars have been favored by all us stunt men because they have always been easy to handle, and because it's almost impossible to demolish them. We used to do turnovers at twenty-five miles an hour. But that was in the silent days of undercranking the camera which made the action, with the film run through the projector at normal speed, seem a bit faster. Nowadays it is considered important to have background action in such shots and, therefore, bailing out of a car or turning it over must be done at a higher speed. Chases are done at as high a speed as 100 miles an hour. In a recent movie, An Innocent Adventuress (1919), we cranked up several foreign-made cars to 105 miles an hour. Show less «

[on what it was like to be a stunt man in the silent-film days] It was taboo in those days to say, "I doubled Harold Lloyd or "He doubled Douglas Fairbanks" because the public believed they did their own work. I doubled Harold Lloyd--who couldn't stand heights--and he gave me every precaution I wanted in climbing buildings and so forth. The only thing I could not have was publicity. Show less «

[on how stunt men got hired in the silent-movie days] The casting director or somebody would come out and say, "Anybody wanna make $10?" They [the stunt men] never said, "What have we got to do?" They said, "Yes, I will". The guy that was chosen would have to jump off a building, So he jumped. If he made it, fine. If he didn't, he got free room and board in the hospital for a while. Show less «

[addressing the rumors that Buster Keaton used stunt doubles rather than doing the stunts himself] To my knowledge, [he] never had a double. I've heard a couple of fellows say they doubled him, but I have never seen this happen. This man was a very clever acrobat . . . I don't think I could have done [stunts] the way he wanted them. His fall was a different fall. He didn't just slip and fall down. He'd do a lot of things before he fell down. That's the way Buster was. You can't double a guy like that. Show less «

A good stuntman--his mind has to be at least fourteen feet ahead of his body. That's the way to stay alive, you know.