Rodd Redwing

I've posted elsewhere about this guy but I just found some photos. Rodd was a well known stuntman and weapons master from the '30s to the '70s. He taught knife, rope, whip, pistol and rifle to Hollywood's greatest and performed some very tricky stunts. His real claim to fame was as a trick shot and fast draw artist. He was a friend of the family and on a number of occasions I got to see him do a demonstration that include the following bits ...

He would ask the audience to hold their hands about a foot apart. He'd hold his hand elbow bent at about shoulder level. He'd say, when you see me go for my gun, clap. Normally he'd have two to three shots off before you could get your hands together.

He had a sort of a target device/bullet catcher (he shot wax bullets) that he would set up. At first it would just have a post with a mint wafer candy about the size of a quarter on it. He would do some sort of fast draw trick and shoot the wafer. Then he would set up a glass panel with a 2 to 3 inch hole in it. He would start the panel swinging and, with a .22 rifle held at port arms, he would snap it up and shoot through the swing hole and break the wafer. Then he would place a Lifesaver candy in a clamp in front of a knife blade with a small balloon on each side. he would shoot through the swinging glass panel, through the hole in the Lifesaver (not breaking it), split the bullet on the knife and break both balloons.

The final trick was throwing a knife at a target. As he let go of the knife and his hand swept downward he would draw his six shooter and fire. The knife would end up bisecting the bullet hole because the bullet got there first!

I can remember him doing this sort of thing in our local San Fernando Valley Shakey's Pizzeria in the 1960s. I have no clue if there were permits involved but, of course, he was well known to all the Los Angeles policemen.


The swinging plate.


Multiple exposure while doing a "border shift;" emptying one pistol and flipping it into the air to take the remaining, loaded one, in his strong hand and continue firing, then catching the empty gun and reholstering it.

There is a mysterious story that Rodd was brought in to shoot a cigarette out of an unnamed movie star's mouth when a special effect failed to work. Supposedly it was the star's idea. Disturbingly, especially if you were the star, Rodd died of a massive heart attack while on an airplane a few years later. A very nice guy. RIP.

I've read about Redwing's knife-and-bullet trick, and some of the others. Like Stephen Hunter's Swagger family, he must have been born with a special relationship with the firearm, able to do effortlessly things that no ordinary human could do.

Inkstainedwretch said:

I've read about Redwing's knife-and-bullet trick, and some of the others. Like Stephen Hunter's Swagger family, he must have been born with a special relationship with the firearm, able to do effortlessly things that no ordinary human could do.

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He was pretty good at nearly anything physical, no doubt he'd have been a gifted athlete if he hadn't go into a different kind of show business. He was a top and with knives, whips and various axes. I don't know for sure but he was probably a pretty good fencer. And he had the stuntman's ability to quickly break down physical actions into easily communicated units that could be taught and perfected. Stunt men often spend much of their time instructing actors how to precisely recreate the portions of the stunts where their face has to be seen.

A lot of actors, probably the vast majority of them, are physically very adept. Think of John Belushi doing back flips at Blues Brothers concerts ... every night for weeks on end. I remember getting a panicked call from a friend who had an audition for a spoofy western and needed to learn how to spin a six-shooter. I stood him alongside my bed (so he wouldn't drop the gun on the floor) and got him started then left him to practice while I mad a phone call. When I came back he was doing reverses and rolling the gun across the back of his hand! In five minutes he was better than I was. Of course, this guy had taken dance in order to meet girls but then went on to dance professionally with the New York ballet and the Joffery! That's typical of a lot of successful actors they train constantly at all sorts of physical stuff just so they never miss an opportunity.