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Well before Evel Knievel or Hollywood stuntmen, reality television or the X Games, North America had a long tradition of stunt performance, of men (and some women) who sought media attention and popular fame with public feats of daring. Many of these feats—jumping off bridges, climbing steeples and buildings, swimming incredible distances, or doing tricks with wild animals—had their basis in the manual trades or in older entertainments like the circus. In The Thrill Makers, Jacob Smith shows how turn-of-the-century bridge jumpers, human flies, lion tamers, and stunt pilots first drew crowds to their spectacular displays of death-defying action before becoming a crucial, yet often invisible, component of Hollywood film stardom. Smith explains how these working-class stunt performers helped shape definitions of American manhood, and pioneered a form of modern media celebrity that now occupies an increasingly prominent place in our contemporary popular culture.

Background Mild traumatic brain injuries receive voluminous attention in the research literature, but this is confined almost entirely to sports and military contexts. As an occupation, performing stunts in film, television, and entertainment places the head at high risk of repetitive impact and whiplash, but stunt performers do not enjoy the same level of healthcare supervision and access as that provided to sports participants. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate stunt performers’ qualitative perceptions of reporting and management of head trauma in their industry. Methods After giving their informed consent, 87 motion picture and television stunt performers responded to a query about their views of ways to improve how stunt performers’ occupational head trauma—specifically head impacts and head whips that could cause a concussion—are reported and managed. We analyzed their responses via content and thematic analyses. Two researchers independently marked and categorized key words, phrases, and texts to identify codes that described participants’ comments. They then revised, discussed, and resolved coding discrepancies through consensus to establish inter-coder reliability. Next, we identified thematic patterns that described participants’ understanding of the stunt performer industry and what must change to facilitate reporting of head trauma. We derived themes from data that occurred multiple times, both within and across short answer responses. Results We identified three primary themes cited by the stunt performers as needs in their industry: (1) Need to Reduce the Stigma of Reporting a Stunt-Related Injury, (2) Need to Eliminate the “Cowboy Culture,” and (3) Need to Improve the Quality of the Work Environment. Conclusions Stunt performers are crucial members of a global entertainment industry valued at approximately US$100 billion annually. A large segment of the world’s population consumes their work in motion pictures, television, and live entertainment. When they are given an anonymous opportunity to speak, stunt performers offer insight into and recommendations for industry changes—primarily cultural and educational in nature—that could improve their physical and mental health, career longevity, and employability when they are confronted with head trauma.

[...]for the past 10 years he has also worked as an advisor for several UK television shows, including the long-running drama Eastenders, helping ensure that storylines involving injury, illness, and health care are responsible and, for the most part, realistic. Alongside trying to get the medicine depicted on screen to look right for viewers, there is actual medical care going on behind the scenes on set. Is there anyone with an allergy or an illness or another condition you should be aware of?” Waller's background is in emergency medicine, but her work on film and television productions is much closer to community health. [...]the producers might say ‘if you feel this person needs to go to hospital immediately, then they are going to hospital immediately, but we would like to explore whether they can stick around for long enough for us to capture the footage that we need’.”

This book is a biographical A to Z guide to several hundred unheralded stunt performers who created some of the cinema's greatest action scenes without credit or recognition. The time period covered encompasses the silent comedy days of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, the early westerns of Tom Mix and John Wayne, the swashbucklers of Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and Burt Lancaster, the costume epics of Charlton Heston and Kirk Douglas, and the action films of Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, and Charles Bronson. Without stuntmen and women working behind the scenes the films of these action superstars would not have been as successful. Now fantastic athletes and leading stunt creators such as Yakima Canutt, Richard Talmadge, Harvey Parry, Allen Pomeroy, Dave Sharpe, Jock Mahoney, Chuck Roberson, Polly Burson, Bob Morgan, Loren Janes, Dean Smith, Hal Needham, Martha Crawford, Ronnie Rondell, Terry Leonard, and Bob Minor are given their proper due. Each entry covers the performer's athletic background, military service, actors doubled, noteworthy stunts, and a rundown of their best known screen credits.

Complacency arises from a natural human drive to seek comfort and stability, often as a response to achieving a level of success or routine that seems satisfactory (Bargh & Morsella, 2008). Implicit bias involves unconscious attitudes that shape judgments and actions (Bargh & Morsella, 2008), while selection bias occurs when certain groups or data points are systematically favored or excluded, leading to skewed results (Rothman et al., 2008). [...]offshore drilling crews showed lapses in situation awareness and vigilance when exposed to routine, lowconsequence events, a condition that often precedes more severe incidents (Sneddon et al., 2013). Another notable example is the death of stunt pilot Art Scholl during the filming of Top Gun in 1986, highlighting complacency toward the inherent risks of performing aerial stunts (Check-Six. com, n.d.; Murano, 2009; Production Bulletin, 2021).

Acute appendicitis is the most common abdominal surgical emergency, with an average of 7-9% of individuals developing the condition within their lifetime.1 While cases of acute traumatic appendicitis are rare, medical literature supports their plausibility with the most famous case stretching back to the controversial 1926 death of stunt performer, Harry Houdini. Several mechanisms have been proposed by which blunt abdominal trauma results in acute appendicitis. In this review, we describe a young, otherwise healthy male, who developed epigastric abdominal pain after being struck in the abdomen while wrestling with his cousin of similar age. The patient was found to have peri-appendiceal inflammatory change, appendiceal mural thickening and edema consistent with acute uncomplicated appendicitis.

Buster Keaton's most spectacular gag- and surely one of the most dangerous movie stunts ever executed-was staged in 1927 toward the end of production of his last independent feature film, Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). As we see it in the film, Buster is standing in front of a two-story house during a violent windstorm, and the whole front of the house comes loose and falls forward. Buster, who is facing away from the house, does not see it coming, but we do. As it crashes to the ground, we see that a small attic window falls right over the spot where Buster is standing, saving his life. What made this gag so dangerous was that the facade of the house weighed about two tons, having been constructed to fall without bending. It was shot in one take, a long shot, and it appears in the film intact, with no editing. Keaton really stood there, and the front of the house really fell. The clearance around his head and shoulders was about two inches. After describing this gag in his book The Theatre and Cinema of Buster Keaton, Robert Knopf considers the perplexing question it raises: \"In this shot, Keaton far exceeds any reasonable demands for realism. . . . He easily could have constructed the same scene through editing. . . . Yet Keaton risked his life. . . . Why?\" (101).In addressing Knopf's question, this article draws upon and extends his insightful discussion of Keaton's comedy, especially gags such as this one. Knopf explains the falling facade gag as a continuation of Keaton's practice of doing his own stunts and filming them in such a way-using long, uncut takes-that the viewers have no doubt about their authenticity and about Keaton's bravery in undertaking them. He also notes that a long-running visual motif throughout many of Keaton's films shows Buster passing through windows and doors (Knopf 100-01). He discusses these traits in the context of vaudeville traditions that Keaton adapted to the new possibilities offered by film.

For the purpose of this research, experienced stuntmen were given the task of performing an extreme action - a jump from a height of 11 meters. Some psycho-physiological and biochemical reactions were studied, giving indications of the changes in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system of the subjects in such an extreme situation. One of the tasks of the study was to determine how such a stressor affects their sense of time. In the publication, we present the conclusions drawn on the basis of the obtained results. The research included work in normal and extreme situations. In the first case, it took place in a hall, while in the second one, it took place on the edge of an 11 meters platform. The experiment was conducted in two variants. In the first, the subjects were required to count the time between two sound signals issued by a computer, and in the second variant - to jump off the edge of the platform at a randomly determined by the computer second after the first signal. In the hall, they jumped from a height of 20cm and in the extreme situation - from 11m. The results were subjected to a mathematical-statistical processing with SPSS 20. Some of our findings overlapped with findings made by other researchers, but some were diametrically opposed. We noticed that in an extreme situation, the subjectively calculated time of the person changes its course. For those motivated to act, it slowed down its course, and for those motivated to give up, it accelerated.