By Michael Ireland, Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service answritermike@gmail.com
STUDIO CITY, CA (ANS – Feb. 10, 2015)
-- As the quiet figure of Bob Yerkes quietly slipped into the recent
Hollywood Prayer Network glittering HOLLYWOOD HONORS 2015 event, where
he was to be one of those honored, along with others like Pat Boone,
Gavin MacLeod and Rosey Grier, you would never have guessed that this
man had been defying death with his extraordinary stunts for about 68
years.
So
ANS founder, Dan Wooding, who was there to cover the gathering at the
CBS TV studios in Studio City, California, managed to grab him for an
interview and asked him first of all how his name is pronounced. He
laughed and said, “Yerkes; it rhymes with circus!”
Born
Brayton Walter Yerkes on February 11, 1932, this legendary American
stuntman began a life of acrobatics in the circus as a teenager and went
on to work as a stuntman in such films as “Back to the Future,” “Star
Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi,” and “Hook.”
Yerkes
said, “I started tumbling down at the Santa Monica Muscle Beach, which
they now call Venice Muscle Beach, when I was eleven, and then I ran
away and joined the Clyde Beatty Circus at fifteen and joined an
acrobatic act.”
He
actually got started in the circus at the end of 1946. Born and raised
in Santa Monica and also Culver City, Yerkes remembers being at Palms
Grammar School around the 4th grade with Robert Blake; and then went to
Hamilton halfway through the 9th grade, “and that’s as far as I got.
That’s when I ran off decided to use my body for a living instead of my
mind.”
Yerkes
doubled for Arnold Schwarzenegger one time in a movie called “Commando”
– “just one stunt, winging through the air and landing on an elevator
that was going down.”
He
also starred in “Back to the Future” doubling for Christopher Lloyd in
the scene where Lloyd’s character is up on the clock sliding to the
ground. “And then they used that in ‘Back to The Future 2 and 3.’ Then I
was in the disaster film earthquake ‘Towering Inferno’ -- all these
different disaster films. I was in so many thousands of films, that I
can’t remember them all!”
Yerkes
told Wooding that while stunt-doubling, he’d been “knocked out many
times and broke my legs three times. In fact the first time I broke my
legs was in France. The name of the movie was ‘Breakout’ with Charles
Bronson. We were getting ready for the stunt and the guy says ‘break a
leg,’ and I broke them both!”
Then,
while in Canada, Yerkes got a concussion when scaffolding fell over and
hit him in the head. “As a result, I have a terrible time with my
memory, but I’m getting better. It used to be when I would talk I
wouldn’t be able to finish a sentence. But now it’s a good excuse for my
senior moments.”
Yerkes
will celebrate his 83rd birthday on February 11 – and he’s still doing
stunt work. “In fact, stuntmen say ‘if it’s dangerous, give it to
Yerkes. He’s dispensable.’”
He
recalled that his last role took three and a half months “playing a
Cardinal, they hung me up and set me on fire in ‘Angels and Demons’ with
Tom Hanks.”
Yerkes
was asked about his faith in Christ. “My mother and dad never mentioned
God, but then when I was with Ringling Brothers -- I think it was
’56,’57, I remember reading the Bible and I told myself, ‘I’ll read it
and list all the contradictions.’ I really didn’t know anything about
it. It took me a year and 4 months to finish it and when I had finished
it, I said, ‘This couldn’t have been written by men unless they were
God-inspired.
“So
since then I read it, never belonged to any particular church, because
I’m always traveling. And then, I remember I came and played in
Hollywood and I had a little group on the Ringling show and we’d read
the Bible together and we worked here. Jimmie Dodd, from the
Mouseketeers, was in a group and he spoke to my people. So then I
started calling my group ‘The King’s Ring.’ Then, I helped with a lot of
different ministries and the Jesus People when they started that back
in the ‘60s.
“I’ve
been to a lot of different ministries and have been helping them get
going, but the entertainment business is where I felt most like reaching
people.”
About
receiving an award at the HOLLYWOOD HONORS 2015 event, Yerkes said with
a huge smile on his face: “It just swells my head up and I pop out the
few hairs I have left! It’s nice, but the one I want to give the glory
to is Jesus. I’ve got to say, ‘He’s the greatest stuntman there ever was
-- He stood in for everybody. He specialized in ‘high work’ up on a
cross.”
He
added, “That was my specialty too -- high work. Trapeze and stuff like
that. I won the ‘Best High Word Award’ in in 1985 in New York on the
Statue of Liberty. I doubled Fred Ward in a movie called ‘Remo
Williams.’ They had scaffolding around it -- they were refurbishing it
-- and I whipped around 300 and some feet.
“Doing
the acrobatic act, I used to work the old Madison Square Garden with
Ringling Brothers. I also worked in the Catskills all the time. So it’s
been an interesting life.”
Yerkes
said he’s never really written much about his life -- “I only got
halfway through the 9th grade -- besides I’m trying to get everybody to
read that other Book!”
However,
he discovered on a visit to the Museum of Transportation, while working
in England, that in 1895 his great grand-father Charles Tyson Yerkes
took $20,000,000 over there and formed the Underground Group and built
the Tube system in London. “And what I (also) didn’t know, before that
he’d built the Chicago elevated trains too.
“So
I’m glad I didn’t get any of the money -- then I’d have had a love for
money and wouldn’t be able to do summersaults. Although my summersaults
are getting lower and lower now…”
Photo one: Dan Wooding interviews Bob Yerkes
Photo two:Bob Yerkes (left) with the Flying Alexanders
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