Harvey Parry(1900-1985)

Swam the Golden Gate in San Francisco, circa WWI

From the beginning Ford cars have been favored by all us stunt men because they have always been easy to handle, and because it's almost impossible to demolish them. We used to do turnovers at twenty-five miles an hour. But that was in the silent days of undercranking the camera which made the action, with the film run through the projector at normal speed, seem a bit faster. Nowadays it is considered important to have background action in such shots and, therefore, bailing out of a car or turning it over must be done at a higher speed. Chases are done at as high a speed as 100 miles an hour. In a recent movie, An Innocent Adventuress (1919), we cranked up several foreign-made cars to 105 miles an hour.