Danger on the Silver Screen

“DANGER ON THE SILVER SCREEN,” three special presentations spotlighting the exhilaration of movie stunts and the men and women who risked their lives to carry them out, will run at Film Forum on three consecutive nights:  Western great Tom Mix in THE GREAT K&A TRAIN ROBBERY (1926) on July 11, featuring live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner, Richard Sarafian’s VANISHING POINT (1971) on July 12, and William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION on July 13.  

TCM’s Scott McGee, author of the new book Danger on the Silver Screen: 50 Films Celebrating Cinema's Greatest Stunts (Running Press, a TCM Book), will introduce all three movies and will sign copies of his new book (available at our concession) in the lobby following the screenings. 

Preceding THE GREAT K&A TRAIN ROBBERY, Mr. McGee will also give a short presentation on the history of stunts in movies, including an excerpt from the 1914 serial The Hazards of Helen, with star Helen Holmes doing her own stunts.  Tom Mix, the biggest Western star of his day, was also famous for doing his own stunts (he reportedly was “blown up once, shot 12 times and injured 47 times”), but is little known today: few of his nearly 300 films survive (many were destroyed in a vault fire in 1937).