Stunt scenes have almost become a spectacle in their own right. Some are so over the top, like many of the stuntsTom Cruiseachieves for his films. Some have ended in tragedy. Others have simply become legends that have been exaggerated with hyperbole over the years. WithDoctor Zhivago, which chronicles the life of a Russian physician interrupted by World War I and the Russian Revolution, one stunt scene has become infamous for causing the amputation of a stuntwoman’s legs.But is this true? No, it is not. How did this legend of the Hollywood stunt grow to be if there was nothing to back it up?
What Happened During ‘Doctor Zhivago’s Infamous Scene?
Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) is on board a moving train in this sequence. The boxcar doors are wide open, and as they pass through a decimated village, many people run up to the train in an attempt to board it. Here, a woman (Lili Murati) carrying her (fake) baby runs up to the car Zhivago is in, begging to be helped in the moving train. They safely get the baby on board, but as he tries to help the woman in she stumbles and screams, seemingly pulled under the car and onto the tracks. The immediate next cut is the woman being pulled onboard the train safely. Now, it is easy to assume that hearing there was anaccident on set, and there was an accident, to jump to the worst possible conclusion that the stuntwoman lost her legs. But that is not what happened.
Indeed, the woman was injured on set. She was pulled under the train car and taken to the hospital.Geraldine Chaplinwho played Tonya, Zhivago’s wife, recounts the filming of this scene in a making-of documentary for the 30th anniversary of the film. In this, she states “She went under, she went under the train. And she got her legs very hurt, they weren’t cut off, but they were very badly . . .” She was rushed off to the hospital with injuries to her legs. Production continued, and directorDavid Leanfaced harsh criticism from the crew for seeming to brush over the incident, apparently saying “dress the double” before moving on. Though Sharif himself clarified that Lean seemingly projected his collectiveness while being “privately […] very concerned about the woman and made many phone calls to the hospital asking about it.“David Lean: A BiographybyKevin Brownlowalso chronicles the incident further. It mentions that despite her stumble being visible in the final cut of the film, she bunched up as she fell and the thick layers of clothing presumably protected her as well. Only three weeks later it was reshot successfully with original actress Lili Murati courageously returning for the role.
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While a great tragedy was averted inDoctor Zhivago, many films, unfortunately, do not have the same happy ending. Many films of the silent era have injuries in the completed film if the film is still available and not lost. Perhaps one of the most interesting injuries on set was with silent film starBuster Keatonwhile filmingSherlock Jr.In another stunt involving a train, Keaton is running atop one before jumping onto a waterspout before he reaches the last train car. The water was released, and its force was strong enough to knock him to the ground. Remarkably, he got up and walked away, but suffered headaches a few weeks later.Flash forward thirty years, and Keaton learned after an X-ray that his neck had been broken. This is one very strange incident and one that also thankfully did not end terribly.
Not everyone is so lucky. There are a lot of deaths in the film industry, stunt or otherwise. One of the most recent is theaccidental death of cinematographerHalyna Hutchinson the set ofRust.That accident mirrors another that happened in 1994 with the death ofBrandon Leein an adaptation ofThe Crow. Both of these tragedies were the result of prop guns.In 2017 stuntwoman Joi Harris was killed in a motorcycle accident during the filming ofDeadpool 2. The most terrible part about these is that many of them could have been prevented.
Many films have tragedies behind their productions, usually preventable tragedies, butDoctor Zhivagois not exactly one of them. While Murati was injured on set, thankfully she did not suffer catastrophic injuries or even possibly death due to the train car. The only question it does raise is how Hollywood needs to overhaul how they treat and conduct stunts on film. It also provides a look into how stories grow over time into much more spectacular tales than they usually were.
