Yakima Canutt

Early years

Yakima was born Enos Edward Canutt in the Snake River Hills near Colfax, Washington, one of five children of John Lemuel Canutt, a rancher, and his wife Nettie Ellen Stevens. He grew up in eastern Washington on a ranch near Penawawa Creek, founded by his grandfather. His father operated the ranch and also served a term in the state legislature.

Canutt's formal education was limited to elementary school in Green Lake, then a suburb of Seattle. He gained the education for his life's work on the family ranch, where he learned to hunt, trap, shoot, and ride.

Canutt first broke a wild bronco when he was 11. As a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m) 16-year-old, he started bronco riding at the Whitman County Fair in Colfax in 1912, and at 17 he won the title of World's Best Bronco Buster. Canutt started rodeo riding professionally and gained a reputation as a bronc rider, bulldogger, and all-around cowboy. It was at the 1914 Pendleton Round-Up that he got the nickname "Yakima" when a newspaper caption misidentified him. Other sources claim he adopted the nickname from the Yakima River Valley in Washington. "Yakima Canutt may be the most famous person NOT from Yakima, Washington" says Elizabeth Gibson, author of Yakima, Washington.

Winning second place at the 1915 Pendleton Round-Up brought attention from show promoters, who invited Canutt to compete around the country.

"I started in major rodeos in 1914, and went through to 1923. There was quite a crop of us traveling together, and we would have special railroad cars and cars for the horses. We'd play anywhere from three, six, eight, ten-day shows. Bronc riding and bulldogging were my specialties, but I did some roping," said Canutt.

During the 1916 season, he became interested in divorcee Kitty Wilks, who had won the Lady's Bronc-Riding Championship a couple of times. They married on July 20, 1917, while at a show in Kalispell, Montana; he was 21 and she 18. They divorced in 1922. While bulldogging in Idaho, Canutt suffered tears to his mouth and upper lip by a bull's horn; after getting stitches, he returned to the competition. A plastic surgeon corrected the injury a year later.

Career

Rodeo

Canutt won his first world championship at the Olympics of the West in 1917 and won more championships in the next few years. In between rodeos, he broke horses for the French government in World War I. In 1918, he went to Spokane to enlist in the United States Navy and was stationed in Bremerton. In the fall, he was given a 30-day furlough to defend his rodeo title. He was discharged in spring 1919. At the 1919 Calgary Stampede, he competed in the bucking event and met Pete Knight.

He traveled to Los Angeles for a rodeo, and decided to winter in Hollywood, where he met screen personalities. Tom Mix, who had also started in rodeos, invited him to be in two of his pictures. Mix added to his flashy wardrobe by borrowing two of Canutt's two-tone shirts and having his tailor make 40 copies. 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.

Canutt won the saddle-bronc competition at the Pendleton Round-Up in 1917, 1919, and 1923 and came second in 1915 and 1929. He won the steer bulldogging in 1920 and 1921, and won the All-Around Police Gazette belt in 1917, 1919, 1920 and 1923. While in Hollywood in 1923 for an awards ceremony, he was offered eight Western action pictures for producer Ben Wilson at Burwillow Studios; the first was to be Riding Mad. He won the first leg of the Roosevelt Trophy as the cowboy who accumulated the most points between Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Pendleton Round-Up. After he won three years in a row at the Fort Worth Rodeo in Fort Worth, Texas, it came to be known as "Yak's show."

Acting

Canutt had been perfecting tricks such as the Crupper Mount, a leapfrog over the horse's rump into the saddle. Douglas Fairbanks used some in his film The Gaucho. Fairbanks and Canutt became friends and competed regularly at Fairbanks's gym. Canutt took small parts in pictures to get experience. It was in Branded a Bandit (1924) that his nose was broken in a 12-foot fall from a cliff. The picture was delayed several weeks, and when it resumed, Canutt's close shots were from the side. A plastic surgeon reset the nose, which healed, inspiring Canutt to remark that he thought it looked better.

Stuntwork

When his contract with Wilson expired in 1927, Canutt made appearances at rodeos across the country. By 1928, the talkies were coming out, and though he had been in 48 silent pictures, Canutt knew his career was in trouble. His voice had been damaged from flu in the Navy. He started taking on bit parts and stunts, and realized more could be done with action in pictures.

In 1930, between pictures and rodeoing, Canutt met Minnie Audrea Yeager Rice at a party at her parents' home. They kept company during the next year while he picked up work on the serials for Mascot Pictures Corporation. They married on November 12, 1931, and had three children together. Two sons followed their father into stunt work.

When rodeo riders invaded Hollywood, they brought a battery of rodeo techniques that Canutt would expand and improve, including horse falls and wagon wrecks. He also developed the harnesses and cable rigs to make the stunts foolproof and safe. Among the new safety devices was the 'L' stirrup, which released a rider's foot if he was performing falling off a horse, so that he did not get hung in the stirrup. Canutt also developed cabling and equipment to cause spectacular wagon crashes, while releasing the team of horses, all on the same spot every time. Safety methods such as these saved film-makers time and money and prevented accidents and injury to performers and animals.

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. This often killed or severely injured the horse, requiring it to be put down. At a minimum it was badly shaken and unusable for the rest of the day. The 'Running W' is now banned and has been replaced with training for the falling-horse technique.

It is believed that the last time the Running W was used was on the 1983 Iraqi film Clash of Loyalties, when British actor and friend Marc Sinden and stuntman Ken Buckle (who had been trained by Canutt) performed the stunt three times during a cavalry charge sequence.

While working on Mascot serials, Canutt practiced and perfected his most famous stunts, including the drop from a stagecoach that he performed in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). That stunt was filmed on Lucerne Dry Lake, north of Lucerne Valley, California. He first performed it in Riders of the Dawn (1937) while doubling for Jack Randall.

Directing

In 1940, Canutt sustained serious internal injuries while doubling for Clark Gable in Boom Town (1940) when a horse fell on him. Though in discomfort for months after an operation to repair his bifurcated intestines, he continued to work. Republic's Sol Siegel offered him the chance to direct the action sequences of Dark Command, starring Wayne and directed by Raoul Walsh. For Dark Command, Canutt fashioned an elaborate cable system to yank back the plummeting coach before it fell on the stuntman and horses; he also created a breakaway harness from which they were released before hitting the water.

In 1943, while doing a low budget Roy Rogers picture called Idaho, Canutt broke both his legs at the ankles in a fall off a wagon. He recovered to write the stunts and supervise the action for another Wayne film, In Old Oklahoma. In the next decade, Canutt became one of the best second unit and action directors. MGM brought Canutt to England in 1952 to direct the action and jousting sequences in Ivanhoe with Robert Taylor. This would set a precedent by filming action abroad instead of on the studio lot. Canutt introduced many British stuntmen to Hollywood-style stunt training. Ivanhoe was followed by Knights of the Round Table, again with director Richard Thorpe and starring Robert Taylor. Canutt again was brought in for lavish action scenes in King Richard and the Crusaders.

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

Canutt directed the close-action scenes for Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960). He 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 (1959), Canutt staged the chariot race with nine teams of four horses. He trained Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd to do their own charioteering. He and his crew spent five months on the race sequence. In contrast to the 1925 film, not one horse was hurt, and no humans experienced serious injuries. His son Joe Canutt, while doubling for Charlton Heston, cut his chin because he did not follow his father's advice to hook himself to the chariot when Judah Ben-Hur's chariot bounced over the wreck of another chariot.

Death

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. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery. Canutt has a memorial plaque in the cemetery's Portal of Folded Wings.

Legacy and honors

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Canutt awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street in 1985.

His honors include:

1967 Academy Honorary Award for achievements as a stuntman and for "developing safety devices to protect all stunt men everywhere".

1969 Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame

1975 National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Rodeo Hall of Fame

Stuntmen's Hall of Fame

2001 Texas Trail of Fame

Other film awards

1959 – National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Special Citation shared with Andrew Marton for directing the chariot race in Ben-Hur

1978 – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "A tribute to Yakima Canutt" dinner

1984 – The Motion Picture & Television Fund's Golden Boot Award

Filmography

Selected filmography

Lightning Bryce (1919) as the Deputy

The Desert Hawk (1924)

The Riddle Rider (1924)

Branded a Bandit (1924)

Romance and Rustlers (1925)

A Two-Fisted Sheriff (1925)

The Riding Comet (1925)

White Thunder (1925)

Scar Hanan (1925)

The Human Tornado (1925)

Wild Horse Canyon (1925)

The Devil Horse (1926)

The Fighting Stallion (1927)

Bad Men's Money (1929)

The Three Outcasts (1929)

Riders of the Storm (1929)

Firebrand Jordan (1930)

Westward Bound (1930)

Ridin' Law (1930) as Buck Lambert

The Hurricane Horseman (1931)

The Shadow of the Eagle (1932) as Boyle

Battling Buckaroo (1932)

Guns for Hire (1932)

The Wyoming Whirlwind (1932)