Vic Armstrong (left) with another Indiana Jones stunt double. Photo: Imdb. ever performed stunts in The Spy Who Loved Me. “I crash the Mini Moke off the pier. Someone throws a hand grenade, it explodes, and I go up the ramp with three stuntmen behind me and fall into the water. It was a wonderful… wonderful film for me.”
Taylor, now 76 and still involved in the stunt game (he's called to the new Mission Impossible as we say), is also the only stuntman to double for two 007s in the same year — and Roger Moore, and Sean Connery for the 1983 rival Bond. films «Octopus» and «Never Say Never». He has a Guinness World Record, which he proudly tells me is still in his house.
As for Octopussy, he doubled Moore in India — drove through the jungle and jumped over a camel on a tuk tuk . When Taylor returned home, stunt legend Vic Armstrong called from the Bahamas and asked him to fill in for Never Say Never.
“I was in the Bahamas for seven weeks,” he says. “I was killed while climbing out the window, I was stabbed, I was shot, I was strangled on the stairs… all in the same title sequence. I think I've been killed five times.» It wasn't all violence. “Sean Connery borrowed my golf clubs because he forgot his,” Taylor laughs.
Fellow stuntman and stunt coordinator Jim Dowdall has a career spanning over 40 years. He was knocked off the platform on the Death Star; thrown across the moon by a Kryptonian super-criminal; Flash Gordon fought him almost to the death; had over 300 car accidents; was hung in a meat locker by Bob Hoskins; and got hit in the GoldenEye while sitting on the toilet at the urging of his buddy Pierce Brosnan («I wish Jim was there,» Brosnan said of the hazi trick).
Rocky Taylor and Jim Dowdall star in the ITV documentary «Hollywood Bulldogs: The Rise and Fall of a Great British Stuntman» about the glory years of British stuntmen. and their devastating impact on action films.
The film also features Vic Armstrong, Greg Powell, Paul Weston, Frank Henson, Richard Hammatt and Ray Austin. They each boast incredible careers as stuntmen and stunt coordinators.
The documentary goes back to a time before their generation, when stuntmen were mostly extras who volunteered to go down stairs for a few extra pounds. .
«They said, 'I'll put a rubber band on my buttocks and elbows,'» Taylor says. «That's how they did it. It was never 'safety first' like it is today. you can, we will invite someone else.”
The first stuntmen are described as «characters» — boxers, wrestlers, villains, bouncers, schemers and World War II veterans. Strong nails, old school guys. Among this generation was Rocky Taylor's father, Larry Taylor, an actor, extra and stuntman best known for playing Hughes in a Zulu film.
The most famous of the old guard was Joe Powell, «the father of British stuntmen», who performed one of the greatest tricks. In The Man Who Wanted to Be King, he fell off a rope bridge more than 100 feet into a ravine. If he had missed his target — a stack of boxes on a ledge — he would have collapsed another 2,000 feet.
As the story goes, American stuntmen bottled it that day. Few British and American rivalries still seem to exist. «A lot of screaming,» says Jim Dowdall of American performers. «Something like 'look at me.' The difference with the British, according to Dowdall, was that «we weren't looking for publicity.» Photo: BritBox
Rocky Taylor began his career in 1961. After earning a black belt in judo as a teenager, he taught Cliff Richard to do some comedic moves in The Young Ones («They said, 'You get on so well with Sir Cliff, could you play the guy he got into a fight with?'») . His big break came in the ITV series The Avengers. Subsequent television appearances have included The Saint, Department S and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). “It was like an apprenticeship,” he says.
By 1969, Taylor was gliding his car down the Cresta Run—a mile-long toboggan run in Switzerland—at Monte Carlo, or Bust. “I had studded tires to keep my grip,” Taylor says. «I was followed by a helicopter, I have six cameras on me and five or six stuntmen everywhere — just in case something goes wrong.»
72-year-old Jim Dowdall went the other way. He went to school with Prince Charles, joined a circus, and worked as a film gunsmith (providing firearms for The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare). He joined the Parachute Regiment and returned to the movies for his first ever stunt, racing down curved stairs in a Victorian wheelchair.
In the early days, there were a lot of «cowboys»—stuntmen who threw themselves. in every situation and never seen again. Jim Dowdall remembers a stuntman who had the dubious nickname «fearless.»
«He spent as much time in the hospital as he did on set,» says Dowdall. “The main criterion for a stuntman is not that he has broken every bone in his body. It just means he screwed up badly.”
Top 'Hits'Rocky Taylor' Credit: @StuntmanRocky
Crucial to this, Dowdall says, is an understanding of fear and limitations. He said no twice. At the start of his career in the BBC film The Robber, he was asked to jump from one castle tower to another. It was mounted incorrectly and, in his estimation, crashed into a brick wall at over 40 miles per hour. Despite being one of his first jobs — and a chance to double for the mighty Peter O'Toole, no less — Dowdall turned it down. The stuntman who took on the job confirmed one of Dowdall's mottos: bravado hurts.
“He would sit in the dressing room chair and say, ‘These London stuntmen don’t have a bottle!’” Dowdall recalls. “He broke his pelvis, three ribs, a shoulder blade, and when they let him down, he was not breathing — he had to be forced to move. He never worked again. It was an important lesson — I was right. Even in my inexperience, I could tell that this was not the way to do it.”
Dowdoll wrote about his adventures in his book Man on Fire. In later years, he focused on coordinating stunts, but most recently, in 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, he wrecked cars. He downplays his biggest, most elaborate stunts, which require the most precautions («It looks spectacular, but it's by no means the most dangerous»). But he brings up one impressive trick for, um, Bergerac.
Joe Powell takes to the air in Magnificent People in Flying Machines. boat on the helicopter at about 45 knots — jumps on it and climbs to a height of 300 feet, still hanging under the helicopter, ”says Dowdall. “The guy who was in the helicopter and tried to get me inside screwed himself up. I kept saying, «I'm fine, Steve!» It was just a day's work.”
Both Jim Dowdall and Rocky Taylor credit their generation with innovating the stunt business with new practical effects methods and improved safety conditions. Perhaps the biggest game changer was the establishment of the British Stunt Register in 1973. He legalized stunt work, making it a recognized profession in this country with insurance and contracts.
Vic Armstrong describes it as the «cartel» of the time, tightly controlling their slice of the film industry. The pinnacle, unsurprisingly, was Bond.
“If you got into the Bond circuit, you became part of the stunt core,” Dowdall says. “Sometimes you played two or three different villains in a day. You'll get shot on the stairs, then you'll get a beard and you'll wreck your bike.»
Vic Armstrong and Frank Henson in » Indiana Jones». Photo: BritBox
Rocky Taylor was also ready to go backstage to tell the story of Bond. “Roger Moore was a great friend of mine,” he says. “I was at Pinewood Studios with Les Crawford [Moore's doppelgänger]. We were returning to the set after lunch, and Roger stuck his head down the hallway. He said, «Rocky! Forest! Fast!» We raced down at 100 miles per hour. He said: “You are looking at James Bond now. I just signed a contract!” He opened a bottle of champagne and began to dance, singing: “I'm James Bond! I'm James Bond!» It was wonderful.”
Later, Taylor had a terrible accident. On the set of the 1985 film Death Wish 3, director Michael Winner asked Taylor to jump off the roof of a burning building. Winner ordered the flames to be lit much higher than necessary — 17 feet tall and frighteningly hot — causing Taylor to fail the jump. He broke his pelvis and vertebrae and received burns.
Winner arrived at the hospital with journalists for a photo shoot. Posing, Winner whispered, «Don't think you can sue me, Rocky, you can't get away with it.» He was out of action for four years.
In the age of CGI, stunt work is on the rise again, with better precautions than ever — security equipment can now simply be digitally erased. Taylor points to the size of the cables that Tom Cruise used to run around the Burj Khalifa at 17,000 feet in Mission: Impossible. yourself out of the window for a few banknotes.
The Hollywood Bulldogs are now on ITVX
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