Los Angeles
That’s him flying headlong into a saguaro cactus in How the West Was Won. That’s him tumbling down a staircase alongside a drunken John Wayne in McLintock. And that’s him — not Steve McQueen — fishtailing down Tyler Street in San Francisco at 90 mph in Bullitt.
A lifelong Los Angeles resident, Janes died June 24 at 85. He had Alzheimer’s disease. He outlived many of the actors he was hired to double in scenes deemed too risky for a highly paid celebrity.
When a script called for Esther Williams to leap from an 80-foot cliff in Jupiter’s Darling, Janes pulled on a wig, the appropriate swimming attire and jumped into the ocean. He did the same for McQueen, a temperamental actor who liked to do his own stunt work and seemed put out when the director told him he wanted Janes to do the dirty work in a particularly tricky escape scene in Wanted Dead or Alive.
“So I ran and dove through the window, turned a complete somersault, landed on my feet, ran, hit the corner of that wooden walkway and vaulted over two horses, cleared them totally, lit on the third horse, which was Steve’s, in the saddle and grabbed it and off and around the corner.”
McQueen was so impressed with the deftness of the stunt, Janes told National Public Radio in a 2001 interview, that he agreeably deferred stunt work to Janes thereafter. The two went on to work together for 21 years.
Janes was born in Sierra Madre Oct. 1, 1931, and attended Pasadena City College and then California State University, San Luis Obispo, before joining the Marines during the Korean War.
He taught math and science at a private high school in San Fernando and made the U.S. Olympic team in 1956 and again in 1964, both times competing in the pentathlon.
He was still teaching when he heard that MGM was looking for a stuntman to fill in for Williams during the cliff-jumping scene. The shot was to be filmed nearby on Catalina Island and, being an experienced swimmer and diver, he thought it seemed like easy enough work, so he took the assignment. Within six months, he’d done stunt work on seven movies.
“The principal finally called me in and said, ‘You either teach school or work in the pictures.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you later,’” he told The Los Angeles Times in 2002.
Though his name was largely known only in the industry, he appeared — however briefly, and however violently — in Spartacus, Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, How the West Was Won, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Dirty Dozen, The Graduate, Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure, Back to the Future, To Live and Die in L.A., Spider-Man, and hundreds of movies and television shows.
He doubled for Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, Charles Bronson, John Wayne, Debbie Reynolds, Yul Brenner and McQueen over and over again.