Motorcycle stunts in the 1920s (silent film)

Yesterday Carlos D. brought us a video of the NO-DO with a very Spanish invention. Today I'm going to bring you something much older. Perhaps the name of Buster keaton, an exceptional artist who made his name in silent movies. When the talkies arrived, his star declined a lot, although he was able to prolong his career until the sixties of the last century.

Of course, the career of one of these actors hardly reached far in the years because mainly they did the action scenes themselves, no stuntmen or action actors to take the blows required by the stunts in the movies. Not the infographic resources available in our time.

As an example, you can see below an excerpt from a 1924 silent film titled Sherlock Jr. (The modern Sherlock Holmes) in which Buster Keaton played a crazy detective inspired by the character in the Conan Doyle novels. In the cut you can see the stunts that Buster does in a scene on a 1923 Harley Davidson Model J, a whole new Superbike of that season.

Piloted from above the handlebar, dodging cars at intersections, while believing that he is still carrying the Senate rider in the seat of the motorcycle. Although perhaps the best scene is the one in which two trucks serve as a passage on a missing bridge section. And in the end he arrives in time to save the girl from the hands of the evil one on duty who has kidnapped her.

Of course, in many cases you can see the "trick", but we must not forget the time in which these images were recorded and especially that in many cases the motorcycle is actually circulating and driven by the actor himself. I hope you liked the minutes that the scene lasts as much as I did.