Evel Knievel: American Hero

Evel (n Bobby) Knievel's mother wanted him to be a painter, but the young teenager from Butte, Mont., was too wild and restless for anything so stationary, preferring the rougher pleasures of petty crime, sports and motorcycle riding. This breathlessly earnest biography of the motorcycle stuntman recounts his early days as an insurance salesman who once gained company acclaim for selling 271 policies to the residents of an insane asylum. But Knievel's true calling was to attempt incredibly dangerous feats with motorcycles, and after he won a bar bet by driving a bike over a VW parked on the street, his fate was sealed. Knievel's first act had him jumping two cougars and a box of angry rattlesnakes, and though he actually smashed open the box of snakes, he was encouraged to move on to bigger and better stunts. The number of cars, beginning at 10, kept getting larger, and the consequences of his crashes getting more severe, until 1968, when he attempted to jump over Caesar's Palace Fountains, failed and almost died. Though he did not, as was often claimed afterwards, break every bone in his body, it was probably as much his strange ability to heal and his willingness to reinjure himself as it was his motorcycling abilities that enabled him to continue performing. The desire to jump the Grand Canyon fascinated Knievel, but the federal government thwarted him, forcing him to settle for a crossing of Snake River Canyon in 1974. His rocket/motorcycle contraption malfunctioned, causing him to parachute into the river. Knievel emerged unscathed, but his career went the way of the bike, leaving him with a jail term for beating up a writer, massive liver failure and the exploits of his son Robbie to contemplate in his later years. Pictures not seen by PW. (Nov.)