Background and career
Robert Craig Knievel (October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007), known professionally as Evel Knievel ( EE-vəl kə-NEE-vəl), was an American stunt performer and entertainer. Throughout his career, he attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. Evel Knievel was born in Butte, Montana. Raised by his paternal grandparents, Knievel was inspired to become a motorcycle daredevil after attending a Joie Chitwood auto daredevil show. He left high school early to work in the copper mines but was later fired for causing a city-wide power outage. After adopting the nickname "Evel Knievel", he participated in rodeos and ski jumping events, and served in the U.S. Army before marrying Linda Joan Bork and starting a semi-pro ice hockey team. To support his family, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service and later worked as an insurance salesman. Eventually, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership in Washington, but faced difficulties promoting Japanese imports. After the dealership closed, Knievel worked at a motorcycle shop where he learned motocross stunts that would later contribute to his daredevil career. Knievel's most famous stunt was an attempt to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace, which resulted in severe injuries. Knievel became famous, breaking numerous records throughout his career. On September 8, 1974, Knievel attempted to jump across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho using a rocket-powered cycle called the Skycycle X-2. The jump failed after the parachute deployed prematurely, but Knievel survived with minor injuries. Knievel sought to profit from his image through endorsements and marketing deals. American Eagle Motorcycles signed him, and his popularity grew with young boys. From 1972 to 1977, Ideal Toy Company sold over $125 million worth of Knievel toys. Knievel's fame led to TV appearances and partnerships with companies like AMF and Harley-Davidson. However, after an assault conviction and jail time, he lost endorsements and declared bankruptcy. Despite a decline in his daredevil career, Knievel made a marketing comeback in the 1990s and continued to be involved in various ventures. Knievel died on November 30, 2007, at the age of 69 due to diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was buried in his hometown of Butte, Montana. Posthumously, Knievel has been honored through various exhibits, a museum, and tribute jumps. His legacy also lives on in television commercials featuring his stunts.
Knievel was born on October 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana, the first of two children of Robert E. and Ann Marie Keough Knievel. His surname is of German origin; his paternal great-great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany. His mother was of Irish ancestry. Robert and Ann divorced in 1940, after the 1939 birth of their second child, Nicolas, known as Nic. Both parents decided to leave Butte. Knievel and his brother were raised in Butte by their paternal grandparents, Ignatius and Emma Knievel. At the age of eight, Knievel attended a Joie Chitwood auto daredevil show, which he credited for his later career choice as a motorcycle daredevil. Knievel was a cousin of Democratic U.S. Representative from Montana, Pat Williams (1937–2025). Knievel left Butte High School after his sophomore year. He got a job in the copper mines as a diamond drill operator with the Anaconda Mining Company. He was promoted to surface duty, where he drove a large earth mover. Knievel was fired when he made the earth mover do a motorcycle-type wheelie and accidentally drove it into Butte's main power line, leaving the city without electricity for several hours. Knievel's website says that he chose his nickname after spending a night in jail in 1956 after being arrested for reckless driving. In the same jail that night was a man named William Knofel, who had the nickname "Awful Knofel"; this led to Knievel being referred to as "Evel Knievel". Seeking new thrills and challenges, Knievel participated in local professional rodeos and ski jumping events, including winning the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski Association Class A Men's ski jumping championship in 1959. During the late 1950s, Knievel joined the United States Army. His athletic ability allowed him to join the track team, where he was a pole vaulter. After his army stint, Knievel returned to Butte, where he met and married his first wife, Linda Joan Bork. Shortly after getting married, Knievel started the Butte Bombers, a semi-pro hockey team. To help promote his team and earn some money, he convinced the Czechoslovak Olympic ice hockey team to play the Butte Bombers in a warm-up game to the 1960 Winter Olympics (to be held in California). Knievel was ejected from the game minutes into the third period and left the stadium. When the Czechoslovak officials went to the box office to collect the expense money that the team was promised, workers discovered the game receipts had been stolen. The United States Olympic Committee ended up paying the Czechoslovak team's expenses to avoid an international incident. Knievel tried out with the Charlotte Clippers of the Eastern Hockey League in 1959, but decided that a traveling team was not for him. After the birth of his first son, Kelly, Knievel realized that he needed to come up with a new way to support his family financially. Using the hunting and fishing skills taught to him by his grandfather, Knievel started the Sur-Kill Guide Service. He guaranteed that if a hunter employed his service and paid his fee, he would get the big game animal desired or Knievel would refund his fee. Knievel, after learning about the culling of elk in Yellowstone, decided to hitchhike from Butte to Washington, D.C., in December 1961 to raise awareness and to have the elk relocated to areas where hunting was permitted. After this conspicuous trek (he hitchhiked with a 54-inch-wide (1.4-meter) rack of elk antlers and a petition with 3,000 signatures), he presented his case to Representative Arnold Olsen, Senator Mike Mansfield, and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Culling was stopped in the late 1960s. After returning home to the west from Washington, D.C., he joined the motocross circuit and had moderate success, but he still could not make enough money to support his family. In 1962, Knievel broke his collarbone and shoulder in a motocross accident. The doctors said he could not race for at least six months. Still needing to help support his family, he again switched careers and sold insurance for the Combined Insurance Company of America, working for W. Clement Stone. Stone suggested that Knievel read Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude, a book that Stone wrote with Napoleon Hill. Knievel credited much of his later success to Stone and his book. Knievel was successful as an insurance salesman, but felt that his efforts were being unrecognized. When the company refused to promote him to vice president after he had been a few months on the job, he quit. Wanting a new start away from Butte, Knievel moved his family to Moses Lake, Washington. There, he opened a Honda motorcycle dealership and promoted motocross racing. During the early 1960s, he and other dealers had difficulty promoting and selling Japanese imports because of the steep competition of their auto industry, and the Moses Lake Honda dealership eventually closed. After the closure, Knievel went to work for Don Pomeroy at his motorcycle shop in Sunnyside, Washington. Pomeroy's son, Jim Pomeroy, who went on to compete in the Motocross World Championship, taught Knievel how to do a wheelie and ride while standing on the seat of the bike.
As a boy, Knievel had seen the Joie Chitwood show. He decided that he could do something similar using a motorcycle. Promoting the show himself, Knievel rented the venue, wrote the press releases, set up the show, sold the tickets, and served as his own master of ceremonies. After enticing the small crowd with a few wheelies, he proceeded to jump a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter) box of rattlesnakes and two mountain lions. Despite landing short and his back wheel hitting the box containing the rattlesnakes, Knievel managed to land safely. Knievel realized that to make a more substantial amount of money he would need to hire more performers, stunt coordinators, and other personnel so that he could concentrate on the jumps. With little money, he went looking for a sponsor and found one in Bob Blair, owner of ZDS Motors, Inc., the West Coast distributor for Berliner Motor Corporation, a distributor for Norton Motorcycles. Blair offered to provide the needed motorcycles, but he wanted the name changed from Bobby Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils Thrill Show to Evil Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils. Knievel did not want his image to be that of a Hells Angels rider, so he convinced Blair to at least allow him to use the spelling Evel instead of Evil. Knievel and his daredevils debuted on January 3, 1966, at the National Date Festival in Indio, California. The second booking was in Hemet, California, but was canceled due to rain. The next performance was on February 10, in Barstow, California. During the performance, Knievel attempted a new stunt in which he would jump, spread-eagled, over a speeding motorcycle. Knievel jumped too late and the motorcycle hit him in the groin, tossing him 15 feet (4.6 m) into the air. He was hospitalized as a result of his injuries. When released, he returned to Barstow to finish the performance he had started almost a month earlier. Knievel's daredevil show broke up after the Barstow performance because injuries prevented him from performing. After recovering, Knievel started traveling from small town to small town as a solo act. To get ahead of other motorcycle stunt people who were jumping animals or pools of water, Knievel started jumping cars. He began adding more and more cars to his jumps when he would return to the same venue to get people to come out and see him again. Knievel had not had a serious injury since the Barstow performance, but on June 19 in Missoula, Montana, he attempted to jump twelve cars and a cargo van. The distance he had for takeoff did not allow him to get up enough speed. His back wheel hit the top of the van while his front wheel hit the top of the landing ramp. Knievel ended up with a severely broken arm and several broken ribs. The crash and subsequent stay in the hospital were a publicity windfall. With each successful jump, the public wanted him to jump one more car. On March 25, 1967, Knievel cleared 15 cars at Ascot Park in Gardena, California. Then he attempted the same jump on July 28, 1967, in Graham, Washington, where he had his next serious crash. Landing his cycle on the last vehicle, a panel truck, Knievel was thrown from his bike. This time he suffered a serious concussion. After a month, he recovered and returned to Graham on August 18 to finish the show; but the result was the same, only this time the injuries were more serious. Again coming up short, Knievel crashed, breaking his left wrist, right knee, and two ribs. Knievel first received national exposure on March 18, 1968, when comedian and late-night talk show host Joey Bishop had him on as a guest of ABC's The Joey Bishop Show.
While in Las Vegas to watch Dick Tiger successfully defend his World Boxing Association (WBA) and World Boxing Council (WBC) light heavyweight titles at the Convention Center on November 17, 1967, Knievel first saw the fountains at Caesars Palace and decided to jump them. To get an audience with casino CEO Jay Sarno, Knievel created a fictitious corporation called Evel Knievel Enterprises and three fictitious lawyers to make phone calls to Sarno. Knievel also placed phone calls to Sarno claiming to be from American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and Sports Illustrated inquiring about the jump. Sarno finally agreed to meet Knievel and arranged for Knievel to jump the fountains on December 31, 1967, New Year's Eve. After the deal was set, Knievel tried to get ABC to air the event live on their popular Wide World of Sports. ABC declined but said that if Knievel had the jump filmed and it was as spectacular as he said it would be, they would consider using it later. Knievel, at the age of 29, used his own money to have actor/director John Derek produce a film of the Caesars jump. To keep costs low, Derek employed his then-wife Linda Evans as one of the camera operators. It was Evans who filmed the famous landing. On the morning of the jump, Knievel stopped in the casino and placed his last $100 on the blackjack table (which he lost), stopped by the bar, and had a shot of Wild Turkey, and then headed outside where he was joined by several members of the Caesars staff, as well as two showgirls. After doing his normal pre-jump show and a few warm-up approaches, Knievel began his real approach. When he hit the takeoff ramp, he said later, he felt the motorcycle unexpectedly decelerate. The sudden loss of power on the takeoff caused Knievel to come up short and land on the safety ramp which was supported by a van. This caused the handlebars to be ripped out of his hands as he tumbled over them onto the pavement where he skidded into the Dunes hotel parking lot. As a result of the crash, Knievel suffered a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to his hip, wrist, and both ankles, and a concussion that kept him in the hospital. Rumors circulated that he was in a coma for 29 days in the hospital, but this was refuted by his wife and others in the documentary film Being Evel. The Caesars Palace crash was Knievel's longest attempted motorcycle jump at 144 ft 6 in. After his crash and recovery, Knievel was more famous than ever. ABC declined to air the event live on Wide World of Sports. The Caesars Palace historical jump video is now owned by K and K Promotions, Inc which is the successor in interest and owner of all Evel Knievel trademarks, film footage, and copyrights.
In a 1971 interview with Dick Cavett, Knievel stated that he was uninsurable following the Caesars' crash, stating, "I have trouble getting life insurance, accident insurance, hospitalization and even insurance for my automobile ... Lloyd's of London has rejected me 37 times so if you hear the rumor that they insure anybody, don't pay too much attention to it." Four years later, a clause in Knievel's contract to jump 14 buses at Kings Island required a one-day $1 million liability insurance to the amusement park. Lloyd's of London offered liability insurance for $17,500. Knievel eventually paid $2,500 to a U.S.-based insurance company.
To keep his name in the news, Knievel proposed his biggest stunt ever, a motorcycle jump across the Grand Canyon. Just five months after his near-fatal crash in Las Vegas, Knievel performed another jump. On May 25, 1968, in Scottsdale, Arizona, Knievel crashed while attempting to jump 15 Ford Mustangs. Knievel ended up breaking his right leg and foot as a result of the crash. On August 3, 1968, Knievel returned to jumping, making more money than ever before. He was earning approximately $25,000 per performance, and he was making successful jumps almost weekly until October 13, in Carson City, Nevada. While trying to stick the landing, he lost control of the bike and crashed, breaking his hip again. By 1971, Knievel realized that the U.S. government would never allow him to jump the Grand Canyon. To keep his fans interested, Knievel considered several other stunts that might match the publicity that would have been generated by jumping the canyon. Ideas included jumping across the Mississippi River, jumping from one skyscraper to another in New York City, and jumping over 13 cars inside the Houston Astrodome. While flying back to Butte from a performance tour, he looked out the window of his airplane and saw the Snake River Canyon. After finding a location just east of Twin Falls, Idaho, that was wide enough, deep enough, and on private property, he leased 300 acres (1.2 square kilometers) for $35,000 to stage his jump. He set the date for Labor Day (September 4), 1972. On January 7–8, 1971, Knievel set a sales record at the Houston Astrodome by selling over 100,000 tickets to back-to-back performances there. On February 28, he set a new world record by jumping 19 cars with his Harley-Davidson XR-750 at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California. The 19-car jump was shot for the biopic Evel Knievel. Knievel held the record for 27 years until Bubba Blackwell jumped 20 cars in 1998 with an XR-750. In 2015, Doug Danger surpassed that number with 22 cars, accomplishing this feat on Evel Knievel's actual vintage 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750. On May 10, 1970, Knievel crashed while attempting to jump 13 Pepsi delivery trucks in Yakima, WA. His approach was complicated by the fact that he had to start on pavement, cut across grass, and then return to pavement. His lack of speed caused the motorcycle to come down on its front wheel first. He managed to hold on until the cycle hit the base of the ramp. After being thrown off, he skidded for 50 feet (15 m). He broke his collarbone, suffered a compound fracture of his right arm, and broke both legs. On March 3, 1972, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, after making a successful jump, he tried to come to a quick stop because of a short landing area. He reportedly suffered a broken back and a concussion after getting thrown off and run over by his motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson. Knievel returned to jumping in November 1973, when he successfully jumped over 50 stacked cars at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. For 35 years, Knievel held the record for jumping the most stacked cars on a Harley-Davidson XR-750 (the record was broken in October 2008). His XR-750 is now part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Made of steel, aluminum, and fiberglass, the customized motorcycle weighs about 140 kilograms (300 pounds). During his career, Knievel may have suffered more than 433 bone fractures, earning an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime". However, this number could be exaggerated: his son Robbie told a reporter in June 2014 that his father had broken 40 to 50 bones; Knievel himself claimed he broke 35.
