Biography

Bud Davis

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Overview

Born
December 23, 1936 · USA
Birth name
George H. Davis
Height
6′ 2½″ (1.89 m)

Mini bio

Stuntman, stunt coordinator, and occasional actor Bud Davis was born George H. Davis on December 23, 1936. Davis raced cars and rode motorcycles in his youth. Moreover, Bud worked for six months at a finance company before getting a job as a bartender at a bar located across the street from the Warner Brothers back lot in California that a lot of stunt guys frequently patronized. The stunt guys one fateful day asked Davis if he wanted to watch a fight scene that was being staged on the Warners back lot. Bud's subsequent career as a stuntman was born on that day after he was offered the opportunity to participate in said fight scene. Davis joined the Extras Union and did some work as an extra before going on to embark on a long and impressive career as a stuntman and stunt coordinator in both films and television alike that encompasses several decades. Outside of his extensive stunt work, Bud also acted in a handful of movies and TV shows; he's especially memorable as the creepy hooded phantom killer in the drive-in horror cult favorite The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976). Davis settled in Durango, Colorado in the wake of retiring from the stunt profession.
- IMDb mini biography by: woodyanders

Family

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Trivia

Featured in the Stuntman Hall of Fame

Quotes

[reflecting on his career as a stuntman] When I was doing it, there were maybe 75 stunt people in the business and we flew everywhere. It was great fun; the best job I could imagine.
The fighting was the hardest thing to learn because it's choreographed and you have to know where the camera is the whole time you're doing the fight so it doesn't show a miss. That was the most difficult part.
You're paid by the stunt, the danger of the stunt you're doing. You come in, if you're working one day, you come in on a daily. When I started it was like a hundred dollars, I think, just to be there. And then to do something, they'd pay what was called a stunt adjustment. And depending how dangerous it was, they'd pay more. And depending on how many times you did it; like if there's a problem with the camera and you have to do it again, they have to pay you. If you do something wrong, they don't have to pay you when you do it again.
When you fall off a running horse at 30 miles an hour onto baked, hard road, you can't fall like you're looking; you have to fall like you're shot off the horse. You can't be looking for a place to land; you have to just take it. Stair falls are another thing -- how do you learn to do that? You don't learn to do that, you just fall down the stairs because otherwise it looks like you're trying to fall down the stairs.
Kids were different in my day. You didn't go home and watch television: You played baseball, you played football, you climbed trees. You were physical. I was a motorcycle rider, car racer, and that kind of stuff. It was kind of a natural for me; to get paid for it was a bonus. It was great fun. Sometimes you were scared and then after it was over you felt like King Kong: "I did that! I was never scared!" You were petrified: Anyone who tells you they weren't scared is either stupid or they were lying.