10 Photos from When Entertainment Involved Real Danger

Articles that talk about how back in the day, the danger was real for the performers on stage, tend to sound like they miss those days. We don’t. We believe we live in an era where safety needs to come first, and where animals aren’t exploited. It isn’t a perfect world, but we’re trying.

Instead, we are focusing on these images to remember the strange things we thought were fun. Dangerous stunts still happen, but with a much more dedicated medical staff. Animals are still used in entertainment, but with far more laws protecting them. These are the windows to a past we won’t be returning to.

Polar Bear Chorus

Training a bear to do something is one thing, training a whole group of them is quite another. These bears had to balance on balls, look cute, and jump over rings of fire just to earn a meal and go back to their cells.

Basketball On Wheels

Perhaps one of the more quaint auditions to the list, here we have some players of basketball with an additional difficulty spike: balancing on monocycles. It’s hard to imagine any dribbling taking place.

Elephant Parade

While the animals here seem to be treated better than the bears (and better than in Dumbo), these poor elephants must have been scared of being around so many people. And believe me, a scared elephant is one of the most dangerous things in the world.

Balancing Without A Net

Yes, seeing acrobats doing their craft without need of a safety net is impressive, but only because you fear for the poor person’s life. Is it really all that less impressive if you know the artist will survive at the end?

Monowheel Confidense

Riding a monocycle is already hard, but it is harder if you also need to balance someone on top of you. Fortunately, the audiences will be focused on the person on top, since the one below will be too focused to be charismatic.

The General

Moving on to films, The General featured one of the most expensive and dangerous stunts of the silent era when a real locomotive was sent crashing through a burning bridge.

Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur used a massive practical chariot race involving real horses, real collisions, and significant risk to performers and stuntmen.

The Man with the Golden Gun

The Man with the Golden Gun included a record-setting corkscrew car jump performed for real, requiring precise calculations and leaving little room for error.

Police Story

Police Story featured Jackie Chan doing many of his own stunts, suffering burns and injuries during one of cinema’s most famous scenes.

Roar

Roar was filmed with dozens of real lions, tigers, and other big cats. More than 70 cast and crew members reportedly suffered injuries during production.