“I'm trying to teach you to run it – not wreck it!” Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner + Buster Keaton, 1928)
Mar
23
National Near Miss Day
A production photo showing the moment the façade crashing down towards Keaton. The photographer is standing to the right of Keaton at a very safe distance. The thickness of the wall is clearly, frightfully, visible. Even with the open window moving towards him, this blink-and-you-miss-it shot cannot guarantee a happy ending for Keaton or his movie persona William Canfield Jr. DPs: Bert Haines & Devereaux Jennings.
In Steamboat Bill, Jr., former vaudevillian Keaton narrowly escapes the façade of a house crashing down around him.
– William 'Steamboat Bill' Canfield
Both the man and the stunt lived on, probably most famously in Keaton aficionado #JackieChan's Project A Part II (HK, 1987).
Despite all the well-meant tributes, none of the later stunts are as nail biting as the pre-OSHA original.