He made his rodeo debut soon afterward at the Whitman County Fair, winning his first bronc-riding contest on a horse named Little Spokane. His first major rodeo was in in Walla Walla, Washington. There, Canutt reconnected with a noted horse breeder he had met and admired. Sundown became a rodeo legend when he won the bronc-riding championship of the world in at the age of The Walla Walla rodeo featured a newly introduced event. The following week, Canutt went on to the Pendleton Oregon Roundup, where he would earn the nickname Yakima because he happened to be palling around with a couple of young cowboys from the Yakima, Washington, area.
Soon after sharing a bottle of Old Crow with them, a newspaper photographer got a picture of Canutt flying in the air above a horse before hitting the ground.
The caption identified him as 'Yakima' Canutt, and the nickname, often shortened to "Yak," stuck. A Colfax friend later said that as a young man Canutt lived for a while in the Yakima Valley and was billed at rodeos as "The Yakima Kid. The Pendleton Roundup had begun life as a fundraiser for the town's strapped baseball team, but by had become one of rodeo's premier events, filling an estimated 40, seats. That year it featured hundreds of Umatilla, Sioux, Yakima, Nez Perce, Blackfoot, and Shoshone tribal members drumming and performing ceremonial dances, a stagecoach race that ended in a spectacular pileup, trick riding, men's and women's relay horse races, roping contests, and a brace of extra big steers imported from Mexico for the bulldogging event.
Canutt's bulldogging debut began with a leap onto the steer from his horse that knocked the steer over. He was then dragged around by the steer while hanging onto it by one horn, eventually pinning him down with an innovative half-nelson maneuver.
It wasn't fast enough to win, and Canutt's bronc and bull riding didn't win him any money either, but he'd made his big-time rodeo debut and earned himself a lifelong nickname. This was apparently fine with Canutt, who was said never to have liked the name Enos. Over the years, it was often assumed he was of Indian descent because of his nickname, and he sometimes played along with the misconception, assigning himself to various tribes, but when the truth came out asserting that he would have been proud to have actually been an Indian.
After the show was over, Canutt worked breaking horses to be sold to the French cavalry in its ongoing war against Kaiser Wilhelm, all the while working out doing pushups to get in great shape for the next year's Pendleton Roundup. In , he and some companions spent three days traveling to Pendleton from Eastern Washington on horseback, and Canutt competed once more. He began to develop a reputation as a good bronc rider and bulldogger. That year, he won a second at Pendleton and firsts in lots of smaller shows.
In , he signed on with a manager who paid his expenses on the rodeo circuit in return for a percentage of his winnings. At the Sheepshead Bay Stampede in New York, he met rodeo fan Teddy Roosevelt, and in Kansas City he and his friends riding in the rodeo parade peeled off on horseback, and rode up to the bar of every saloon they passed, receiving drinks on the house -- fun until someone's horse got stuck in the revolving door of a big hotel.
She weighed less than pounds and barely reached his shoulder, even with her cowgirl hat on. That year, she was named All-Around Champion cowgirl at Pendleton for her bronc riding and relay racing events, and had also been the national Ladies Bronc-Riding Champion twice. They married in at Kalispell, Montana. He said he'd "always had a yen to see the world through a porthole" My Rodeo Years The honeymoon had started off badly, when the bride lit into the groom, cursing him for having arrived at the altar hung over and with a face heavily marked up because of a barroom slugfest with a lumberjack at his bachelor party.
In , he received a furlough from his naval duties to defend his championship at the Pendleton Roundup. He was unsuccessful, and he also got in trouble from the Navy for wearing his white uniform -- bell bottoms and middy blouse -- while bronc riding and bulldogging.
Upon his return to Bremerton, he fell victim to the Spanish influenza epidemic. He lay on a cot in an armory with hundreds of others, bleeding from his mouth. His vocal chords were permanently damaged, giving him a weak, raspy voice.
Canutt returned to civilian life and his rodeo career in He won the Calgary Stampede bucking championship, and his wife, now billed as Kitty Canutt, was cheered by the crowd when she managed to get back on a horse after a bad fall and finished a relay race with a shattered rib. While competing in a rodeo in Los Angeles, Canutt met movie star Douglas Fairbanks, with whom he played badminton and to whom he introduced some fancy mounts -- spectacular ways to jump on a horse -- that Fairbanks used in movies.
He also got together with cowboy friends who were now making movies. He decided to spend the winter in Los Angeles. A new acquaintance, bartender turned cowboy star Tom Mix, got him a job as an extra in his pictures and had him do some stunt fighting and horsemanship. While in Los Angeles, Canutt also divorced Kitty, a dissolution that was uncontested.
When the rodeo season started, Canutt got back on the road, racking up more wins and collecting more trophies. He had already performed some uncredited movie stunts in earlier pictures. Now, he was performing his own stunts and unlike other movie leads, he also doubled for some of the other actors.
By , however, pictures were talking and his career as an actor was over because of the vocal chords that had been damaged after his bout with Spanish influenza. After hearing a recording of his own voice for the first time, Canutt said he sounded "like a hillbilly in a well" Stunt Man Canutt hit hard times, and got deep in debt, picking up stunt work when he could.
Charlton Heston wrote that Yakima Canutt invented the profession of stunt man. Heston seems to have overestimated the pay. In the s, Hollywood was full of cowboys for whom a saloon called the Waterhole and a drugstore at the corner of Gower Street and Hollywood Boulevard -- an area therefore nicknamed Gower Gulch -- had become the end of the trail.
Safety wasn't a concern. See all related lists ». Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDb page. Find out more at IMDbPro ». How Much Have You Seen? How much of Yakima Canutt's work have you seen? User Polls What is your favorite one-word titled Best Picture winner?
See more awards ». Known For. The Star Packer Stunts. Randy Rides Alone Stunts. Show all Hide all Show by Hide Show Stunts credits. Lincoln stunts - uncredited. Hide Show Actor credits. Convict in Prison Break uncredited.
Hide Show Director 17 credits. Hide Show Producer 5 credits. Wayne shoots him, and Canutt drops to the tongue of the stagecoach. Wayne shoots again, and Canutt drops to the ground. He is dragged by the coach until he lets go and passes between the horses and under the stagecoach.
In later films, he perfected the gag sufficiently to complete the circle; that is, he jumps from the seat to the rear team, leaps eventually to the lead team, passes under the vehicle, grabs a bar on the rear of the coach, climbs over the top, and resumes his seat in the driver's box. Canutt sustained serious injuries while performing stunts, including six broken ribs while filming San Francisco These caused him to restrict his activities to directing and intensified his determination to make stunt work as safe as possible.
As a second-unit director for action sequences, he made scores of films during the s, s, s, and s, but his best-known work is the chariot race in Ben-Hur , starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd. Canutt improved upon the previous version of the film, made in the s by Reeves Eason, and took greater safety precautions.
In Canutt won an Academy Award for his stunt work, and the citation included his inventions that had increased the safety of stuntmen. In he was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. The many injuries, some of them life threatening, that Canutt suffered while doing stunt work made him conscious of the safety of the stuntmen and stuntwomen he directed.
In his autobiography, Stunt Man: The Autobiography of Yakima Canutt , he claimed more pride in his safety record than in all of his other accomplishments. He died of natural causes in Los Angeles on May 24, All rights reserved. Early Film Appearances Canutt joined the U.
Became Action Sequence Director Canutt sustained serious injuries while performing stunts, including six broken ribs while filming San Francisco Books Canutt, Yakima, Stunt Man,
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