Conrad Nagel — My Most Thrilling Experience in the Movies (1921) 🇺🇸

During my career in motion pictures I have experienced several thousand different kinds of thrills, but for genuine excitement, of the kind that makes one’s hair stand on end, an incident in Cecil B. DeMille’s new production, Fool’s Paradise, in which I was the central figure, has crowded almost everything else out of my mind.

by Conrad Nagel

The scenes in which I was then working were laid in Siam and I was the rival of a Siamese prince for the love and favor of a lady fair. We three had met at the curb of a deep dry well where the sacred crocodiles were kept, and my lady was supposed to throw her glove down into the pit, promising her hand to the suitor who should recover it. Of course, it devolved upon me, as leading man, to descend and battle with the beasts.

Mr. DeMille had obtained from a Los Angeles zoo four enormous crocodiles, ranging from seven to ten feet in length, and they were placed in the pit. Now crocodiles, away from their native waters, are not particularly savage, but these beasts had been at the studio several days without food and as one may easily imagine, a hungry crocodile is not a pleasant playmate.

It came time to rehearse the scene. I lowered myself into the pit and the four crocodiles immediately prepared for a meal. They started after me, slowly at first, then with the glides of almost incredible swiftness of which this species of giant lizard is capable. I backed away cautiously and they followed. I brandished a short spear, the one weapon which I was allowed to carry, but they wouldn’t be frightened. My back was against the wall. In desperation I lunged at the open mouth of the nearest animal with my wooden spear and he snapped it in two as if it had been a tooth pick.

With a shriek I grasped at one of the property vines which lined the wall and endeavored to pull myself up out of their reach, but my weight was too much for the fragile strand, and back I fell, landing flush on my shoulders. Fortunately the fall carried me several feet out toward the center of the pit and as I leaped to my feet I ran to the opposite side.

Before the crocodiles could get themselves turned about to renew the chase, the people up above managed to get a rope down to me. No sailor ever scaled the side of a ship with more agility than I scaled that wall of stone and concrete.

When I reached the top I sprawled on the floor, flat on my face, and I didn’t speak or move as much as a finger for ten minutes. When I finally raised myself on my elbow to get up, Mr. DeMille was standing over me. He was grinning, but I was in no mood to “come back with a smile.”

“Perhaps you think I had the time of my life down there,” I said. “Well, I did. And now that I’ve had it, I want to tell you that I am through with crocodile stuff. When you get ready to shoot that scene you’ll have to get a substitute for me. I wouldn’t go down there again for all the receipts of this picture.”

“Fine,” replied DeMille. “You won’t have to. You see, you started off so well, doing exactly as a man would naturally do in such a predicament, that I told the cameraman to shoot. He caught the whole thing, and it’s going to make some scene. I’m sorry you had to do it, but it’s good stuff.”

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Here’s Conrad Nagel being attacked by a crocodile, during what he thought was a rehearsal but which turned out differently.

Collection: Pantomime Magazine, September 1921