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Special Feature: Forgotten Daredevils
With the mainstreaming of the X Games and exploits
like BASEjumping, dangerous “stunt sports” have lost
much of their shock value. In fact, few fans
of extreme sports are old enough to remember when
one man stood alone as America’s daredevil:
Robert “Evel” Knievel. Fewer still can
remember Elmer “Nice” Grice.
Knievel is revered by an older generation as the
star-spangled eccentric who tried to jump his
motorcycle over rows of double-decker buses, Idaho’s
Snake River Canyon, and other obstacles nobody else
would dare. But when “Moto” events in the X
Games demand that participants routinely perform
feats once considered death-defying, how can the
modern daredevil cause a stir?
Not surprisingly, many extreme athletes and their
fans are harkening back to a simpler time, embracing
the retro charms of early stuntmen like Nice Grice.
In fact, Mike Metzger, known as “the godfather of
freestyle motocross,” recently replicated Grice’s
trademark stunt from the 1930s: driving his
motorcycle around 12 parked cars. This
maneuver stood as the gold standard for more than 30
years, before Knievel introduced the notion of
traveling over the cars rather than around them.
(Knievel also recognized his debt to Grice--when he
made the Guinness Book Of World Records for breaking
more of his bones than any other human, the
high-flying icon cited as inspiration Grice’s record
for most muscle pulls.)
According to sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar,
tricks that now seem commonplace took decades to
evolve, and as such, the Nice Grice revival may
herald similar trends in other sports: “Stunts
are always a reflection of their era—much as it
wasn’t until the socially turbulent 1960s that Evel
could make that quantum leap of lifting Nice’s
patented exploits off the ground, the same was very
much true in basketball. Around the time Nice
Grice was doing his mad death dance around 12
Studebakers, the Harlem Globetrotters debuted the
flamboyant ‘alley’ play, in which one player would
lob a pass high in the air to another, who would
catch the ball in the general vicinity of the hoop.
“This audacious display became a Globetrotter
staple, and delighted fans for decades. It was
only after the advent of rock’n’roll, the social
upheaval of the ‘60s, and so on, that the nation was
truly ready for something more provocative. It
was in 1969 that they introduced the ‘oop’ component
to the play.
“But I think by now we’ve all grown so numb to the
razzle-dazzle highlight-reel moves, that very soon
you will see the likes of Jason Kidd and Vince
Carter bring back the ‘alley’ play—and perhaps the
classic ‘give and don’t go.”
Elmer Grice wasn’t the only daredevil of the
pre-World War II era, and his style of stunt not the
only one that may be experiencing a modern comeback.
Harry “Mental” Lentol thrived during the dark days
of the Great Depression, when funds were minimal and
audiences’ attention spans considerable.
Eschewing the physical spectacle that was the stock
in trade of most daredevils, Lentol’s performances
reached for a more cerebral audience. He would
read aloud for hours on a darkened stage—astounding
audiences who were keenly aware of the perils of
reading in poorly lit conditions. |
