Enos Edward "Yakima" Canutt (November 29, 1895 – May 24, 1986) was an American rodeo rider, stuntman, and actor. Sometimes called "the King of the Stuntmen," he is considered one of the influential figures in the history of motion picture stuntcraft.

Canutt worked on over 200 films between 1915 and 1975, developing numerous stunt techniques and technologies which later became ubiquitous.

Canutt first broke a wild bronco when he was 11. As a 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.</blockquote>

thumb|right|300px|Kitty Canutt, champion lady rider of the world, on Winnemucca, 1919

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. 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 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. 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.

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.

375px|thumb|Yakima in John Ford's Stagecoach doing the "drop" part of his most famous stunt

John Wayne

While at Mascot, Canutt met John Wayne while doubling for him in a motorcycle stunt for The Shadow of the Eagle (1932). Wayne admired Canutt's agility and fearlessness, and Canutt respected Wayne's willingness to learn and attempt his own stunts. Canutt taught Wayne how to fall off a horse.

<blockquote>The two worked together to create a technique that made on-screen fight scenes more realistic. Wayne and 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. Said Wayne, "I spent weeks studying the way Yakima Canutt walked and talked. He was a real cowhand." In 1934, the two appeared together in the Western Randy Rides Alone, in which Wayne starred and Canutt appeared as "henchman Spike".

In 1932, Canutt's first son Edward Clay was born and nicknamed Tap, short for Tapadero, a Spanish word for a stirrup covering. That year Canutt broke his shoulder in four places while trying to transfer from horse to wagon team.

In 1934, Herbert J. Yates of Consolidated Film Industries combined Monogram, Mascot, Liberty, Majestic, Chesterfield, and Invincible Pictures to form Republic Pictures. Canutt became Republic's top stuntman. He 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, Canutt performed almost all the scenes in which Zorro wore a mask. As a result, he was on the screen as much as the star John Carroll. When the action was indicated in a Republic script, it said "see Yakima Canutt for action sequences."</blockquote>

In the 1936 film San Francisco, Canutt replaced Clark Gable in a scene in which a wall was to fall on the star. Canutt said: "We had a heavy table situated so that I could dive under it at the last moment. Just as the wall started down, a girl in the scene became hysterical and panicked. I grabbed her, leaped for the table, but didn't quite make it." The girl was unhurt but he broke six ribs.

In 1938, Republic Pictures started expanding into bigger pictures and budgets. Canutt's mentor and action director for the 1925 Ben-Hur, Breezy Eason, was hired as second unit director and Canutt to coordinate and ramrod the stunts. For Canutt, this meant not only hiring stuntmen and doing some stunts himself but also laying out the action for the director and writing additional stunts.

John Ford hired Canutt on John Wayne's recommendation for Stagecoach, where Canutt supervised the river-crossing scene as well as the Indian chase scene, did the stagecoach drop, and doubled for Wayne in the coach stunts. For safety during the stagecoach drop stunt, Canutt devised modified yokes and tongues to give extra handholds and extra room between the teams.

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.

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.

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.

Ben Hur

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.

Other films

Walt Disney brought Canutt in to do second unit work for Westward Ho, the Wagons! in 1956. He followed this first live action Western feature film with Old Yeller the next year. In 1960, Canutt worked with Disney on Swiss Family Robinson, which involved transporting many exotic animals to a remote island in the West Indies.

Anthony Mann specifically requested Canutt for the second unit for his El Cid (1961), where Canutt directed sons Joe and Tap, doubling for Charlton Heston and Christopher Rhodes, in a stunning tournament joust. "Canutt was surely the most active stager of tournaments since the Middle Ages" – from Swordsmen of the Screen.

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.

His honors include:

  • 1967 Academy Honorary Award for achievements as a stuntman and for "developing safety devices to protect all stunt men everywhere".
  • 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)
  • The Texas Tornado (1932) as Jackson – Henchman
  • The Telegraph Trail (1933) as High Wolf
  • Scarlet River (1933) as Yak
  • Sagebrush Trail (1933) as outlaw band leader
  • West of the Divide (1934) as Hank
  • The Man from Hell (1934)
  • Fighting Through (1934) as Big Jack Thorne
  • The Man from Utah (1934) as Cheyenne Kent
  • Randy Rides Alone (1934) as Henchman Spike
  • The Star Packer (1934) as Yak
  • The Lawless Frontier (1934) as Bad Man
  • Neath the Arizona Skies (1934) as Bad Man
  • The Dawn Rider (1935) as Saloon Owner
  • Lawless Range (1935) as Joe Burns
  • Outlaw Rule (1935) as Blaze Tremaine
  • Paradise Canyon (1935) as Curly Joe Gale
  • Pals of the Range (1935) as Brown
  • Cyclone of the Saddle (1935) as Snake
  • The Clutching Hand (1936)
  • Wildcat Trooper (1936)
  • Riders of the Rockies (1937)
  • Stagecoach (1939) second unit director, stunt coordinator, and stunts/Cavalry scout, all uncredited
  • Gone with the Wind (1939) as man who attacks Scarlett while riding through shanty town; also uncredited stunt coordinator/stunt double for Clark Gable