Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen DeanSmith with MikeCox. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013.

Abstract

Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen Dean Smith with Mike Cox. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013.There is an intriguing group of books co-authored by Hollywood stuntmen about the business of making movies. Purporting to dispel myths about the industry by disclosing the inner workings of the Dream Factory, auto/biographies Buster Wiles's My Days with Errol Flynn (1989), Gary Kent's Shadows & Light: Journeys with Outlaw in Revolutionary Hollywood (2009), Hal Needham's Stuntman! (2011), and Vic Armstrong's The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman (2011) offer entertaining and enlightening insights into the production and massmarketing of American popular culture. Released in 2013 by Texas Tech University Press, Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen is an important addition to this corpus. Co-authored by Dean Smith and Mike Cox, Cowboy Stuntman relates the fast-paced and unlikely life of Smith, a Texan farm boy turned Olympic Gold Medalist, who became one of Hollywood's leading stuntmen, appearing in ten John Wayne movies and doubling for a long list of actors as diverse as Robert Culp, Michael Landon, Steve Martin, Strother Martin, Robert Redford, and Roy Rogers.As James Garner points out in Cowboy Stuntman's Foreword, Smith's incredible life story reads like a Mark Twain novel (xiii): born and raised in a small town in Texas, Smith lives the American Dream: becoming, in turn, a college track star, a world class athlete winning Olympic gold, a youngster playing professional football, and a talented newcomer breaking into the business of movie making. Containing fourteen chapters which arrange the events of Smith's life in chronological order, Cowboy Stuntman is quintessential^ a Horatio Alger story. Its first four chapters chart Smith's impoverished ranching roots in Texas and his natural athletic abilities that lead him to a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. The next four chapters chronicle the problems that plague many toplevel athletes after their careers on the track have ended. However, Smith, a superior athlete with good looks and engaging self-confidence, proves to be the stuff that Hollywood stuntmen who specialize in making Western movies are made of-an old friend, James Garner introduces him to the industry, and the rest, as they say, is history.The remaining chapters chronicle Smith's successful years in Hollywood and at home in Texas. Containing insider's memories of the professional lives of stars, stunt people, and extras in Hollywood backlots and television studios, these chapters hold intriguing material for movie buffs and scholars interested in the business of American film and television. …