Lila Shanley
Lila Shanley | |
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Born | stunt double , actress, athlete | November 28, 1909
Children | 1 |
Lila Georgia Everett Finn Shanley (November 28, 1909 – November 15, 1996), stage name Lila Finn, was an American
Early life and family
Lila Georgia Everett was born in Los Angeles, California, on November 28, 1909.[1] She was the daughter of Elmer E. Everett and Lila G. Baugh.[1] Her father worked in real estate and her mother was a housewife.[1] Growing up in the beachfront community of Venice, she often dove for coins from tourists at the Venice Hot Salt Water Plunge.[2]
At age 19, she married her first husband, Charles Thornton Finn (born 1899), an American water polo player.[3][4] She later remarried to Samuel Shanley, with whom she had one son, Barry, an attorney.[5]
Film career
At age 27, the blonde, 5 ft 3 in-tall (160 cm) Shanley was hired as the
Shanley went on to double for a succession of leading actresses, including Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, Paulette Goddard in Reap the Wild Wind and Unconquered, Donna Reed in It's a Wonderful Life, Betty Hutton in The Perils of Pauline, and Sandra Dee in A Summer Place.[9] She also doubled for Jane Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, Veronica Lake, Joan Fontaine, Frances Dee, and Sonja Henie.[9] She appeared in more than 100 films.[10][5] In 1947, Jerry Fairbanks produced The Stunt Girl, a short documentary film highlighting her career to date.[11]
Shanley performed a wide range of stunts. In the escape from Atlanta scene in Gone with the Wind, she rode in a horse-drawn carriage through the burning warehouses of the railroad depot.[12] In the graduation party scene in It's a Wonderful Life, she fell into a swimming pool that lay underneath the retractable floor of a high school gymnasium.[13] In Unconquered, she and stuntman Ted Mapes rode a canoe on the rapids then jumped out to grasp an overhanging tree limb;[14] she also sustained an attack of "flaming arrows" in the same film.[15] In To Catch a Thief, Shanley leaped from rooftop to rooftop, then rolled down a slanted roof and broke her fall.[10] She had also "jumped out of bombers, been chased by lions, clawed by tigers, and thrown overboard into icy ocean waters at night", and served as the target for a knife-and-hatchet-thrower.[16] Shanley said stair falls were her favorite stunt, explaining, "They are the most rewarding because everyone thinks they look great. They're quite simple, actually".[2]
In 1981, the Chicago Tribune said that Shanley, then aged 72, "may be the oldest working stuntwoman in America". It credited her long and injury-free career to her conditioning program, which involved swimming 50 laps daily and playing beach volleyball.[17]
Volleyball career
Shanley was the manager of the Santa Monica Mariners women's volleyball team, which won several division titles.[18] From 1955 to 1960, Shanley was a member of the United States women's national volleyball team.[9][5] During this time, the national team competed in two world championships, winning the silver medal in the 1959 Pan American Games.[5] Shanley was the oldest U.S. woman athlete at the 1959 Games.[19]
Memberships and affiliations
Shanley was the founding president of the Stuntwomen's Association of Motion Pictures, established in 1958.[5][20] She was also a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.[7]
Shanley was inducted into the Stuntwomen's Hall of Fame.[9] She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Film.[9]
Death
Shanley died from heart failure on November 15, 1996, aged 86, at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica.[9][5][21]
Selected filmography
- The Hurricane (1937)
- Gone with the Wind (1939)
- Typhoon (1940)
- Just Off Broadway (1942)
- Reap the Wild Wind (1942)
- Frenchman's Creek (1944)
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Unconquered (1947)
- The Perils of Pauline (1947)
- Scarlet Angel (1952)
- Guys and Dolls (1955)
- To Catch a Thief (1955)
- The Court Jester (1956)
- The Ten Commandments (1956)
- A Summer Place (1959)
- Spartacus (1960)
- The Spiral Road (1962)
- Incident in an Alley (1962)
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
- Blazing Saddles (1974)
- The Towering Inferno (1974)
- Earthquake (1974)
- Drum (1976)
- Heartbeeps (1981)
- Surf II (1984)
- The Goonies (1985)
- Out of Bounds (1986)
- Legal Eagles (1986)
- License to Drive (1988)
- Tango & Cash (1989)
- Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989)
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Repossessed (1990)
- RoboCop 2 (1990)
- The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)
- The Rocketeer (1991)
- Goliath Awaits (1991)
- Suburban Commando (1991)
- Folks! (1992)
References
- ^ a b c "California, County Birth and Death Records, 1800-1994". FamilySearch. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e Gregory 2015, p. 32.
- FamilySearch.org. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
- ^ "Charles Finn". databaseolympics.com. 2006. Archived from the original on February 16, 2007. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f "Lila Shanley; Veteran Stuntwoman". Los Angeles Times. November 20, 1996. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
- ^ Gregory 2015, p. 45.
- ^ a b "Founding Members". Screen Actor. Screen Actors Guild: 17. 1990.
- ^ a b c d e f g Freese 2014, p. 96.
- ^ a b c Slide 2012, p. 138.
- ^ Gregory 2015, p. 37.
- ^ Gregory 2015, pp. 45–7.
- ^ "California Death Index, 1940-1997". FamilySearch. Retrieved April 23, 2020.
- ^ "Lila Finn". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. 2019. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
- ^ "Lila Finn". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. 2019. Retrieved June 1, 2020.
Sources
- Freese, Gene Scott (2014). Hollywood Stunt Performers, 1910s-1970s: A Biographical Dictionary (2nd ed.). McFarland. ISBN 9780786476435.
- Gregory, Mollie (2015). Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-813-16624-7.
- Slide, Anthony (2012). Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, Bit Players, and Stand-Ins. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-617-03475-6.