The Thrill Makers

“Starring human flies, daredevil aviators, bridge jumpers, and lion tamers, The Thrill Makers is a great read, as evocative as it is theoretically savvy, and convincingly argued. Culling telling details from a host of long-overlooked sources, Jacob Smith’s account of sensational, high-risk public performance from the Victorian age to the 1930s unearths and illuminates the interwoven histories of public spectacle, masculinity, the motion picture industry, new forms of celebrity, and the expanding American metropolis.”—Greg Waller, Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University.

“The Thrill Makers is an historical tour-de-force that illuminates the origins of risk-taking performance in American entertainment, and shows how its practitioners were gradually marginalized as invisible stunt doubles during the rise of the motion picture industry. Smith’s analysis of the lion tamer, the human fly, and the airplane wing-walker—as well as the many others who thrilled audiences before and during the advent of cinema—inspires us to reconsider the nature of media spectacle, masculinity, performance, celebrity, and labor at the turn of the last century. Impeccably researched, this book is a captivating read that re-frames the emergence of cinema in the context of its relationship to other forms of modern entertainment.”—Barbara Klinger, author of Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home.