How to catch an arrow – Part V

In 1979, Ray Anders became stunt coordinator for a new TV show on ABC called That’s Incredible! I don’t know if it had even started broadcasting when he first contacted me. They wanted to come to my dojo and shoot some footage, then have me appear live on the show in front of a studio audience.

The dojo filming went so well I barely remember it. (I think I have a portion of the footage they shot somewhere.) But the shoot at the studio is still very clear in my mind. They had installed a couple of large, portable bleachers for the audience. They were like the portable ones you might find at a little league baseball game, only with comfortable seats and more sections. We generally caught from around 40 to 45 feet. This would put my archer smack in the middle of the bleachers. I was concerned about several things. First, my archer had to stand about half way up the aisle of one of the bleachers. This put him at an elevation above me. He would be shooting down at me. We had never attempted to catch from such an angle before. Second, he was standing in the middle of a broken visual field. He was surrounded by people who were moving and dressed in different color clothes. I didn’t know if I’d be able to distinguish the arrow from the background or if it could get visually lost in route. And third, there were strong spotlights aimed at me. They were at a high angle, above my direction of focus, but could be a wild card that would distract or blind me temporarily. A split second was all that was needed to throw me off.

The show’s on-camera hosts were John Davidson, Cathy Lee Crosby, and former football great Fran Tarkenton. Davidson and Crosby were very friendly. Cathy Lee even asked what I was doing after the show. And Davidson came up and introduced himself, like I wouldn’t know who he was. Tarkenton made no effort beyond the minimum. He walked around the set spitting chewing tobacco into a paper cup. We had almost no interaction off-camera.

John Davidson also said something interesting before the shoot. The movie Ten, with Dudley Moore and Bo Derrick, was a huge hit in the theaters at the time. John knew or had met Derrick and was, himself, considered a “ten” by a lot of women. He was handsome. He was a good singer. He had his own very popular show. And the ladies loved him. As the ladies who loved him included my wife, I went there hating him, thinking him a stuck up pretty boy. But after meeting and finding him very down to earth, I ended up liking him. Someone asked John if he thought Bo Derrick was a “ten”, as the movie suggested. He said “No.” When pressed for his reasons, he said “Because she’s too young. She has no character in her face. True beauty only comes with age and experience.”

When the audience had been seated and everything ready to go, they asked me to stand in front of a piece of Plexiglass near the back of a small stage. A TV camera was set up behind the glass to get an over-the-shoulder view.

My archer readied the first arrow and sent it towards me. I just tracked it to make sure I could see well enough to make a catch. It seemed tolerable. I touched but didn’t really attempt to catch the second arrow. Having a live audience obviously put more pressure to do something quickly, so I slapped the third aside, while still tweaking things on my end.

Feeling everything was under control, I got serious on the fourth shot. He sent it at me and I almost caught it. It just barely slipped through my grasp. But, my hand’s backward swing continued on and somehow managed to pin the arrow’s shaft against the Plexiglass with the back of my hand. The shaft snapped in two and drove one of the jagged ends almost clear through my hand.

I couldn’t believe it. Blood was squirting straight out of the wound. I had never had a wound that bled like that before, or since. Plus, I wasn’t sure if it had broken a bone.

I asked the producer’s staff if they had a butterfly bandage and some ice. The onsite nurse rushed over to help me. As she put the bandage over the cut and stopped the bleeding, I noticed my hand was swelling very quickly, rapidly getting thicker and thicker. I knew if we didn’t get going quickly, my hand would soon become so swollen I wouldn’t be able to get my fingers to close. (I still have a now faint crescent scar on the back of my right hand.)

We hurried back into position. I focused on making sure to grab the first arrow as that might be all I could do before my hand wouldn’t work. My archer drew a bead on my heart and sent the shot on its way. I grabbed it but felt it slipping through my grasp. I fought to hang on and ended up with handful of feathers, the tip hanging downwards towards the floor. Although it was kind of a catch, I didn’t want to end on that. So I told my archer to shoot more. I cleanly caught the next three, before my hand got so thick it wouldn’t close anymore.

Also on the same episode was a 7-year-old golfer, who none of us paid any attention to, as there were so many similar acts at the time – a 4-year old tennis player, etc. When they reran our episode for the show’s 25^th anniversary, they showed the little golfer again. It was Tiger Woods.

Next time, I’ll get into the story of our exploits that night with another guest, the Oxford Dangerous Sports Club, and getting invited to and then kicked out of one of the top clubs in Beverly Hills. (The Oxford boys got invited and kicked out. But they had invited us. So when they left, we left.) Thanks for reading.