Moab Happenings Archive
Return to home

STUNTS, STARS & LEGENDS - September 2012

Bob Rose
by John Hagner (Artist of the Stars)


Bob was born in 1901 in Telecoe Plains, Tennessee, the son of Silas and Belle Sura (Payne) Rose. He lived in Tennessee the first four years of his life, then moved to Anson, Texas, and later, to Cortez, Colorado. He lived and worked in California prior to his moving to Cory, Colorado in 1981. In 1985 he moved to Colorado Springs.

Drawing of Bob Rose, by John HagnerHe was an exercise boy for race horses, and then he became a jockey.

When he was 14 years old, he started working in movies, in the “Ruth Roland” silent serials. He played her younger brother and doubled her in the more dangerous scenes.

He did his first transfer from motorcycle to plane, motor boat to plane, automobile to plane‑to-train-to auto, and from horse to plane.

Some of the stunt people Bob worked with were Dick Grace, Leo Noomis, Dick Talmadge, Yakima Canutt and Duke Green. He worked in William Boyd films before Boyd became “Hopalong Cassidy”! He doubled actor William Gargan. “Lucky Devils” was a movie about Hollywood Stuntmen ... Bob was in it with several other stunt legends. Silent screen stars like Buster Keaton and Ben Turpin were doubled by Bob, as was Eddie Cantor and cowboy star Tom Mix, even the Great “Houdini”, when he made a silent serial. Bob doubled him only in the most hazardous work. Houdini did all his own tricks and illusions!

All of Bob’s stunts were life-threatening and ‘close calls’! He never broke a bone in all his years of stunting, until the crash in “Flight of the Phoenix” which starred James Stewart and Ernest Borgnine. He doubled for actor Hardy Kruger. He was in the plane when it crashed, in Buttercup Valley, in Arizona. Stunt Pilot Paul Mantz was killed instantly. Bob survived with broken bones. Rose once did a stunt with veteran stuntman Fred Kennedy, one of the top horse stuntmen. They turned over a wagon (front roll-over). Kennedy suffered a bad leg injury. His timing was off. In the John Wayne Civil War epic, “The Horse Soldiers”, Kennedy broke his neck and died instantly following a saddle fall. He didn’t use a stirrup step, as he should have, and didn’t have anything solid from which to leap. It resulted in his death. Bob was only 5’6” in height, so he could double for kids and women.

One of the last stunts he did was in “The Great Race”. He was one of sixty stuntmen and women working in the barroom fight sequences. They rehearsed and shot for two weeks. That segment is said to be one of the best such action sequences ever filmed. He did a stair fall during the melee of stunt actors fighting and leaping. The same goes for the ‘pie fight’ scenes, in which I was one of the bakers, who threw more than 3,500 real fruit-filled pies that took four days and nights to complete. It appeared on screen for six minutes ... and, it made it in the Guinness Book of World’s Records for having more pies thrown in one film.

Bob did a difficult stunt in a Jerry Lewis movie. It was a scene where a patient (he doubled) is on a hospital gurney, had to go out of control down a hill, in-and-out of traffic, finally crashing through a wooden railing and off a pier into the ocean at Paradise Cove in Southern California. He did it in the first take, as he did in all of his scenes.

Bob is an honored inductee in the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame. He was footprinted in cement in 1975 and is one of over a hundred who have been honored.

In the western classic John Wayne movie, “Rio Grande” in 1950, filmed in Moab, Bob did a rear-up; he didn’t own his stunt horse, so he was privileged to use another stunter’s mount. He also worked in “Fort Apache” and “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon”, in Monument Valley.

For more information on the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame, go to www.stuntmen.org.
On Facebook, check Falling For Stars. Then Artist of the Stars. Then Stunt Stars and Legends. Or call 435-260-2160
STUNTS STARS AND LEGENDS
is a series of articles and drawings by John Hagner and appear in Moab Happenings monthly.

John Hagner (Founder) is also the Artist of the Stars.
His Celebrity Portrait Drawings are available at OK Tours, telephone 435-259-7000,
Mailing address: 50 W. 400 N, Moab, Utah 84532.
Say you saw this article in Moab Happenings!

{main}
Return to Archive Index
return to home
 
Return to home