Cowboy Stuntman: Dean Smith’s Story

This is an example of a more formal nonfiction book proposal. At 3,290 words, this proposal netted a contract for Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen, published by Texas Tech University Press in 2013.

He’s fallen from galloping horses, had fistfights with Kirk Douglas, worn a red wig and white tights to double for Maureen O’Hara and taught Goldie Hawn how to talk like a Texan. He’s dangled from a helicopter over the skyscrapers of Manhattan while clutching a damsel in distress, he’s hung upside down from a fake blimp 200 feet over the Orange Bowl and replicated one of the most famous scenes in movie history by climbing on a terrified team of horses to stop a runaway stagecoach.

Dean Smith may have a name plainer than a barbed wire fence post, but that’s the only thing ordinary about this colorful Texan and Olympic gold medal winner who spent a half-century as a Hollywood stuntman and actor.

Honored with a lifetime achievement award from the National Cowboy Museum in 2007 and numerous other prestigious awards, Smith has been in hundreds of television episodes, movies and commercials and worked with some of the biggest names in the business. A founding member of the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Association, he’s an early member of its hall of fame. Today he’s the dean of living Western stuntmen.

A real cowboy who played many a make-believe Texan on television and the big screen, Smith appeared in 10 John Wayne movies, including the classics, “The Alamo,” in which he doubled for Frankie Avalon, and “True Grit,” where he doubled Robert Duval. Smith has doubled for a long list of actors as diverse as Robert Culp, Michael Landon, Steve Martin, Struther Martin, Robert Redford, and Roy Rogers.

Smith appeared in “The Apple Dumpling Gang,” “How the West Was Won,” “In Harm’s Way,” “Eldorado,” “The Birds,” “The Sting,” “Black Sunday,” “Hurry Sundown,” “Sugarland Express,” the remake of the classic “Stagecoach” and scores of other films.

Getting his first big break in the business as a double for Dale Robertson in the 1957 television series “Tales of Wells Fargo,” Smith still sat a saddle he’s adapt at falling from well into the 1990s, appearing in several episodes of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

The people he knew and worked with during his long career as a stuntman and actor read like a Hollywood Who’s Who, from Roy Rogers to Chill Wills and from Alfred Hitchcock to John Ford.

Now 76 and facing the biggest stunt of his career ─ coping with cancer ─ Smith has great stories to tell and he wants to tell them, no holds barred. A few examples:

• Doubling in 1961 for Maureen O’Hara: “I’m standing there, ready to double Maureen for the stair fall [in John Wayne’s “McClintock!”]. I had these pink tennis shoes on, and Duke’s standing there and I said, ‘You know, Duke, I think they’re going to see these pink tennis shoes.’ ‘Ah, hell,’ Duke said, ‘if they notice those pink tennis shoes, we’ll give ‘em back their nickels.’”
• During the filming of “The Alamo” in 1959: “The stuntmen got a race up for me. I was to race a horse 40 yards down the streets of San Antonio de Bexar at Alamo Village. Chuck Hayward would be riding the horse. I knew I had my hands full. I asked my grandmother to send me my starting blocks so I could race the horse and I out-ran it three out of four times. You can race a horse for 40 yards, but after that forget it! Even if you do have mercury in your ass.”
• Replicating the legendary Yakima Canutt’s stunt in the 1965 remake of the classic “Stagecoach”: “A lot of stuntmen wanted to do this picture. Thanks to [actor] Alex Cord I got the job…I had a lot of pressure on me to do the stunt where I crawl out of the stagecoach and onto the top, jump down to the first two horses, then out to the swing team then out to the leaders. All the while, the Indians are chasing us, and then I go back underneath the horses. I did this stunt in one take.”
• Working with Elvis Presley in the 1969 Western “Charro!”: “One day I was in the trailer to change into my costume…I had just taken my clothes off to put on my britches and Elvis throws lighted fireworks into the room and shuts the door. He and all his friends were outside laughing their ass off when I came out…He was a prankster and liked to have fun.”
• Doubling the King of the Cowboys in 1975: “Art Rush calls me up and asked me if I would like to double Roy Rogers on a picture in Texas…I reported to Dickens, Texas where we would shoot on the Four Sixes Ranch, one of the largest in the state. Roy and I didn’t want to stay in Lubbock and do all that driving, so we stayed in Dickens at the Double L Motel…Where we stayed wasn’t the grandest motel but us being country boys it didn’t bother us. What did bother Roy was every afternoon that he called Dale to check in, those gals at the hotel would listen in on their conversation. He started borrowing my pickup and would drive to the nearest pay phone. I enjoyed working with Roy, my boyhood hero. He was a pleasant person and never acted like he was king.”
• Stunting at age 52 in 1984 for comedian Steve Martin in “The Lonely Guy”: “I’ve seen New York City better than most…Tied under a chopper looking down at a cruise ship on the Hudson River. I had a stuntwoman, Carrie Cullen (doubling Judith Ivey) tied to me at all times while in the air. We spent the whole day hanging over Manhattan, the Hudson River, the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty. My legs would go numb, and they would take me down and the medics would rub my legs until I got the circulation back. We landed four or five times on the World Trade Center heliport, then we’d go back up. At the end of the day, I was just limp… The writers came up with a different ending for the movie, and they didn’t even use the scene.”

Book Concept

Written in Smith’s voice using descriptive, detail-filled scenes, this entertainment industry memoir would:

• Tell the action-packed story of a remarkable Texan’s journey from a hard- scrabble ranch life on the Clear Fork of the Brazos to the hills of Hollywood as a Western stuntman-actor and back home again in one piece.
• Give readers an anecdote-filled insider’s view on what it was like to work with many of America’s entertainment icons, including the Duke, John Ford, Ben Johnson, Roy Rogers, Dale Robertson (“Tales of Wells Fargo”), Jim Garner (“Maverick”), and many others.
• Provide insight into the relatively closed world of the Hollywood stuntman as well as the golden era of television Westerns and the sunset years of the big screen oaters. How do you fall off a running horse and not get hurt? How do you have a fist fight and not end up with a black eye? How do you crash through a window and fall on your back from two stories up? How are stunts planned, executed, and filmed?
• Provide insight into the relatively closed world of the Hollywood stuntman as well as the golden era of television Westerns and the sunset years of the big screen oaters. How do you fall off a running horse and not get hurt? How do you have a fist fight and not end up with a black eye? How do you crash through a window and fall on your back from two stories up? How are stunts planned, executed, and filmed?
• Include a filmography of all Smith’s commercials, television appearances and movie performances.

Author’s Background

Long-time professional writer, author of 13 non-fiction regional or nationally published books and scores of magazine articles. Book topics include history, biography, and true crime. Scheduled for publication in March 2008 by Forge Press in New York is the first volume of a two-volume, quarter-million-word history of the legendary Texas Rangers. Magazine article topics range from history to the outdoors.

A former award-wining newspaper reporter and elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters (1993), member of the Author’s Guild, Western Writers of America, Writers League of Texas, and Texas Outdoor Writers Association.

(For writing examples, see my weekly column, “Texas Tales,” at www.texasescapes.com)

Marketability

• Americans are still paying to see Westerns: The movie “3:10 to Yuma” had a vigorous $44 million opening weekend in September 2007. And judging from the variety of Web sites as well as published works on Western films and TV Westerns, people still like reading about the genre itself and the people who played a part in it. As “3:10 to Yuma” actor Peter Fonda put it: “The West is the myth of the American people. It’s who we were at the beginning. There’s no real Americana other than the Western.”
• The Duke Factor: Dead since 1978, John Wayne still ranks in the Top 10 of most popular American actors.
• Stuntmen are in the news: The Feb. 19, 2007, New York Times reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Robert De Niro, among others, were pushing to have a stuntman Oscar category added to the annual Academy Awards. If that happens, Smith may well be getting one more award to add to a long list of honors.
• Dean Smith’s connections: Thanks to his long film career, Smith has many friends, acquaintances and fans who would be interested in reading his life story. Too, Smith is a personable performer who’s worked with the best and is willing to actively promote the book through appearances. He might even bring one of his seven horses. He also will have no trouble getting celebrity endorsements.
• Little competition: A google.com search reveals only one current book on stuntmen, the forthcoming (June 2008) The Full Burn: On the set, at the Bar, Behind the Wheel, and Over the Edge with Hollywood Stuntmen by Kevin Conley (Bloomsbury Publishing.) Neil Summers’ The Unsung Heroes: Hollywood Stuntmen and Stuntwomen (Old West Shop Publishing, 1996) is out of print. Neither book is written from the perspective of someone who actually did stunts and rubbed shoulders with John Wayne and other stars.

Tentative outline

Foreword
Actor James Garner has agreed to write a foreword. If Garner’ health prevents that, Anita La Cava Swift, John Wayne’s granddaughter, would be happy to do so.

Chapter 1 Texas boyhood

Smith grew up on a ranch without electricity or indoor plumbing near Breckenridge in North Texas. Early on, he discovered two things about himself: He made a good hand at riding and roping, and he could run fast. In fact, at least for the first forty yards or so, he could outrun a horse! Attending high school in nearby Graham, he became a star athlete and amateur rodeo performer. On Saturdays, his grandmother often took him to town to see the Westerns of Gene Autry and others. Smith dreamed of being on the big screen someday himself.

Chapter 2 College athletic star

Attending the University of Texas on an athletic scholarship, he played for the Longhorn football team and continued as a track star. A member of the Silver Spurs, the UT honor organization, he once escorted (along with future Harper’s editor Willie Morris) the school mascot – a Longhorn named Bevo – to South Bend when Texas played Norte Dame.

Chapter 3 Helsinki

Fast enough to earn a place on the American track team, Smith won a gold medal in the 400-meter relay at the 1952 world games in Helsinki. As an amateur in the days before million-dollar athletic endorsements, he made no money as a gold medalist. But he met some people who would change the course of his life.

Chapter 4 From Finland to the oil patch

One month after his Olympic win in Finland, at the height of Texas’ disastrous drought of the early 1950s, he was back in Texas working in the oil patch outside of Graham. When classes began that fall, Smith returned to UT in Austin where he dominated Southwest Conference track competition for the next two seasons. At the Coliseum Relays in Los Angeles in 1953, one of his Olympic roommates ─ J.W. Mashburn ─ introduced him to a guy from Oklahoma named James Bumgarner. They become good friends, a relationship that will change Smith’s life in a few years. Drafted after graduation, he missed the 1956 Olympics.

Chapter 5 Going pro one way or the other

Honorably discharged from the Army after two years, Smith signed a free-agent contract with the Los Angeles Rams. Though his speed made him a dangerous wide receiver, he only weighed 160 pounds. Coach Sid Gillman cut him from the squad after the preseason and traded him to the Pittsburg Steelers. Not wanting to live in the East, Smith decided his future lay either in ranching or the movies. Before leaving California for Texas, he went to the Warner Brothers studio to look up an old friend. James Bumgarner, the Oklahoman he had met four years earlier, had succeeded in breaking into the film industry. But the guard at the gate said no one by that name worked there, and a puzzled and frustrated Smith drove back to Texas in a white Oldsmobile that lacked only 34 payments being paid for.

Chapter 6 Maverick was his name

Paying a dime for a Sunday Dallas Morning News, Smith saw a spread in Parade Magazine about the buddy he’d tried to find and realized why he had had no luck. Jim had dropped the “Bum” from his name. Now, as James Garner, he had just shot a pilot for a TV Western called “Maverick.” The newspaper also said Garner would be in Big D performing at a calf scramble. On the advice of his grandmother, who said if he intended to pursue his dream of getting into the movie business he had better saddle up and get with it, Smith drove to Dallas to meet with Garner. His friend agreed that with his horse savvy and athletic prowess Smith would make a good stunt man and offered to help him get a start in the industry. Smith soon moved to California, where with the influence of Garner’s casting director he gained membership in the Screen Actors Guild.

Chapter 7 “Tales of Wells Fargo”

Smith’s first stunt involved falling off a horse for an episode of “Cheyenne,” starring Clint Walker. The young, good-looking Texan picked up other assorted minor gigs until a horse wrangler who took a liking to him got him an audience with another Okie who proved critical to his career, actor Dale Robertson.

Playing a troubleshooter named Jim Hardie, Robertson starred in a popular TV Western called “Tales of Wells Fargo.” Having noticed that Robertson drew his pistol with his left hand, Smith told the actor he also was a leftie and would sure like to double for him if a chance ever presented itself. Two weeks later, while working as an extra for an “I Love Lucy” episode, Smith got a telephone call: Robertson had blood poisoning and needed someone to stunt double for him ASAP. Smith ended up working on the Wells Fargo series for several years, while learning the stunt trade from some of the industry’s legendary figures, including Cliff Lyons and Chuck Roberson.

Chapter 8 Working for the Duke

In 1958, Smith read that John Wayne planned to film an epic movie on the siege of the Alamo. Being from Texas, Smith wanted a shot at joining the company. Through fellow Olympic champion Bob Mathias, who Smith had met and become friends with at Helsinki, Smith got an appointment with Wayne’s oldest son, Michael and his uncle, Bob Morrison – the Duke’s brother. Smith got the job as one of 18 stuntmen who would work on the set near Brackettville in Southwest Texas.

Chapter 9 “The Alamo”

Smith reported in September 1959 to Brackettville, a near ghost town adjacent to an abandoned cavalry post called Fort Clark that had been turned into a dude ranch. Doubling for Frankie Avalon and playing as a Mexican soldier, Smith “died” at the Alamo more times than he can count. About a month into the shooting, Smith did a scene in which he jumped over a horse to knock a Mexican soldier out of his saddle. Right after the director yelled “Cut!” an old man wearing a black eye patch beneath a slopping hat approached Smith. Lifting the patch with one hand, he extends his other hand to 27-year-old Smith. “Son, I’m John Ford. I have never seen anyone jump over a horse and not use a trampoline and I have made many Westerns. If you ever hear of me doing a movie, come to my office. I want you to work on my pictures.” Indeed, Smith went on to work for all the rest of Ford’s pictures, including “Two Rode Together.”

Chapter 10 In the money

His reputation and career well established after working in two hit movies, Smith began making some serious money. With his earnings from “The Comancheros” and Wayne’s Western comedy “McLintock!” Smith bought a ranch style house on three-quarters of an acre in Woodland Hills. In 1962, Smith appeared in a major non-Western, “PT Boat 109.” In that film, Smith met actor Robert Culp, who in 1965 hired him as a double for his TV series, “I Spy.” He also began to get steady work as a stuntman-actor in television commercials pitching products ranging from Kellogg’s Corn Flakes to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.

Chapter 11 Doubling for the King of the Cowboys

In the early 1970s, Smith did two more movies with Wayne, “Rio Lobo” and “Big Jake.” He doubled for Robert Redford in his Mountain Man movie, “Jeremiah Johnson” and played a broadcast reporter in the 1973 hit “Sugarland Express.” In 1975 he doubles for Roy Rogers in the cowboy icon’s last film, “Mackintosh and T.J.” Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, Smith continued to ply his trade, though for the most part the genre that lured him into the business had ridden off into the proverbial sunset. As age and changing industry trends began to slow his career, the awards began to accumulate: The Stuntman’s Hall of Fame inducted him in 1980. The same year the University of Texas inducted him into its Hall of Fame. Five years later, he rode in the Cotton Bowl parade in downtown Dallas and later was named to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.

Chapter 12 “It’s a wrap…” Home to Texas

At 60, Smith returned to Texas in 1992. He settled on his family ranch a hundred miles west of Fort Worth and began raising Longhorns. Not long after coming home, Smith’s wife suffered severe paralysis in a one-car crash only two miles from their ranch. She died four years later. Smith eventually remarried and at 66, fathered a son he named Finis Dean Smith II.

Smith for more than twenty years has participated in charity events to raise money for various children’s charities and cancer research. Motivated by the cancer deaths of Wayne and his close friend Ben Johnson, Smith organized in 2002 the Dean Smith Celebrity Rodeo. It’s had three performances and he’s planning a fourth. On April 8, 2006, the John Wayne Cancer Institute presented Smith with the Duke Award in recognition of his fund-raising work.

A couple of years ago, in an irony that no self-respecting film director would allow in even the corniest script, doctors saddled Smith with a cancer diagnosis. Now 76, the veteran stuntman faces his biggest challenge ever. Before he falls off the saddle one last time, he wants to share his story.