10 Directors Who Nearly Killed Their Actors

5. Michael Curtiz Nearly Drowned A Young John Wayne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mjtr6V5hCE Thinking about the one guy we know for sure who died on Ben Hur got me thinking about what the actor might have gone on to achieve, and this idea is lent credence by the fact that director Michael Curtiz very nearly deprived the world of John Wayne when he was just 21 years old, playing an extra on the director's notorious Noah's Ark. It's sort of hard to make a film about Noah without a big set-piece depicting the Great Flood, and instead of simply using miniatures as suggested, Curtiz went the whole crazy hog, throwing a fleet of hapless extras into the meat grinder and having them be doused with thousands of gallons of water. There were countless injuries on set, but the most alarming report was that three extras drowned and another required an amputation. Not to minimise that tragic loss, but John Wayne was among the extras thrashing around in the water, and given the hazardous conditions, being in the wrong place at the wrong time could just as easily have taken Wayne away before he got to give us one of cinema's first true men's men.