53 Facts About Yakima Canutt

Enos Edward "Yakima" Canutt was an American champion rodeo rider, actor, stuntman, and action director.

Yakima Canutt developed many stunts for films and the techniques and technology to protect stuntmen in performing them.

Yakima Canutt grew up in eastern Washington on a ranch near Penawawa Creek, founded by his grandfather.

Yakima Canutt's father operated the ranch and served a term in the state legislature.

Yakima Canutt gained the education for his life's work on the family ranch, where he learned to hunt, trap, shoot, and ride.

Yakima Canutt started rodeo riding professionally and gained a reputation as a bronc rider, bulldogger, and all-around cowboy.

Yakima Canutt won his first world championship at the Olympics of the West in 1917 and won more championships in the next few years.

Yakima Canutt traveled to Los Angeles for a rodeo, and decided to winter in Hollywood, where he met screen personalities.

Yakima Canutt got his first taste of stunt work in a fight scene on a serial called Lightning Bryce; he left Hollywood to compete in the 1920 rodeo circuit.

Yakima Canutt won the saddle-bronc competition at the Pendleton Round-Up in 1917,1919, and 1923 and came second in 1915 and 1929.

Yakima Canutt won the steer bulldogging in 1920 and 1921, and won the All-Around Police Gazette belt in 1917,1919,1920 and 1923.

Yakima Canutt won the first leg of the Roosevelt Trophy.

Yakima Canutt had been perfecting tricks such as the Crupper Mount, a leapfrog over the horse's rump into the saddle.

Fairbanks and Yakima Canutt became friends and competed regularly at Fairbanks's gym.

When his contract with Wilson expired in 1927, Yakima Canutt made appearances at rodeos across the country.

Yakima Canutt's voice had been damaged from flu in the Navy.

Yakima Canutt started taking on bit parts and stunts, and realized more could be done with action in pictures.

In 1930, between pictures and rodeoing, Yakima Canutt met Minnie Audrea Yeager Rice at a party at her parents' home.

When rodeo riders invaded Hollywood, they brought a battery of rodeo techniques that Yakima Canutt would expand and improve, including horse falls and wagon wrecks.

Yakima Canutt developed the harnesses and cable rigs to make the stunts foolproof and safe.

Yakima Canutt developed cabling and equipment to cause spectacular wagon crashes, while releasing the team of horses, all on the same spot every time.

Yakima Canutt developed the 'Running W' stunt, bringing down a horse at the gallop by attaching a wire, anchored to the ground, to its fetlocks and launching the rider forward spectacularly.

Yakima Canutt first performed it in Riders of the Dawn while doubling for Jack Randall.

Wayne and Yakima Canutt found if they stood at a certain angle in front of the camera, they could throw a punch at an actor's face and make it look as if actual contact had been made.

In 1932, Yakima Canutt's first son Edward Clay was born and nicknamed Tap, short for Tapadero, a Spanish word for a stirrup covering.

That year Yakima Canutt broke his shoulder in four places while trying to transfer from horse to wagon team.

Yakima Canutt handled all the action on many pictures, including Gene Autry films; and several series and serials, such as The Lone Ranger and Zorro.

For Zorro Rides Again, Yakima Canutt performed almost all the scenes in which Zorro wore a mask.

Yakima Canutt had been a world champion cowboy several times and where horses were concerned he could do it all.

Yakima Canutt invented all the gadgets that made stunt work easier.

Yakima Canutt tried to get into directing; he was growing older and knew his stunting days were numbered.

Harry Joe, Yakima Canutt's second son, was born in January 1937.

For Yakima Canutt, this meant not only hiring stuntmen and doing some stunts himself, but laying out the action for the director and writing additional stunts.

For safety during the stagecoach drop stunt, Yakima Canutt devised modified yokes and tongues to give extra handholds and extra room between the teams.

Ford told him that whenever Ford made an action picture and Yakima Canutt wasn't working elsewhere, he was on Ford's payroll.

Also in 1939, Yakima Canutt doubled Clark Gable in the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.

Yakima Canutt appeared as a renegade accosting Scarlett O'Hara as she crosses a bridge in a carriage driving through a shantytown.

In 1940, Yakima Canutt sustained serious internal injuries while doubling for Clark Gable in Boom Town when a horse fell on him.

In 1943, while doing a low budget Roy Rogers picture called Idaho, Yakima Canutt broke both his legs at the ankles in a fall off a wagon.

Yakima Canutt recovered to write the stunts and supervise the action for another Wayne film, In Old Oklahoma.

Yakima Canutt again was brought in for lavish action scenes in King Richard and the Crusaders.

In 1954, Yakima Canutt directed the Hollywood western movie "The Lawless Rider," starring Johnny Carpenter and Texas Rose Bascom.

Yakima Canutt directed the close-action scenes for Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus.

Yakima Canutt took five days to direct retakes that included the slave army rolling its flaming logs into the Romans, and other fight scenes featuring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and John Ireland.

For Ben-Hur, Yakima Canutt staged the chariot race with nine teams of four horses.

Yakima Canutt trained Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd to do their own charioteering.

Yakima Canutt followed this first live action Western feature film with Old Yeller the next year.

In 1960 Yakima Canutt worked with Disney on Swiss Family Robinson, which involved transporting many exotic animals to a remote island in the West Indies.

Yakima Canutt was determined to make the combat scenes in El Cid the best that had been filmed.

In 1985, Yakima Canutt appeared as himself in Yak's Best Ride, directed by John Crawford.

On May 24,1986, Yakima Canutt died of cardiac arrest at the age of 90 at the North Hollywood Medical Center in North Hollywood, California.

Yakima Canutt was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.

Yakima Canutt has a memorial plaque in the cemetery's Portal of Folded Wings.