SAN DIEGO -- When Paul Stader was a young man he discovered he could make thousands of dollars doing high-dives he once did for fun and decided being a stunt man was for him.
Today, Stader is 71 years old and is still practicing his craft in Hollywood.
Between the time film mogul Samuel Goldwyn discovered him making 60-foot dives off the Santa Monica pier for laughs and his latest job training swimmers for a re-make of the 'Creature From the Black Lagoon', Paul Stader has appeared in 101 movies.
Stader said he presently was working on the staging of the underwater stunts that are to be featured in a remake of the horror classic 'Creature From the Black Lagoon.'
Stader, who worked on the original version of the film, said even though he is 71 and has retired from the business twice, he still likes to keep active.
A resident of Malibu, Stader, stays in shape with a demanding regime of swimming, boxing, fencing and gym workouts.
Athletics brought the Missouri native to California 50 years ago. Stader swam in the 1932 Olympic in Los Angeles and stayed on.
He worked as a lifeguard at Santa Monica and was 23 years old when Goldwyn signed him up to take a 97-foot highdive in the film 'Hurricane' in 1937.
'We were making four dollars a day as a lifeguard,' Stader said, 'then I started making a couple thousand to do these dives and I decided 'this is for me''.
Since then he has fallen from horses, driven cars off bridges and hurtled from cliffs without a serious injury.
When not on the set, Stader spends his time doing less strenuous things. He was in San Diego Friday on a promotional tour for Pace, a pool chlorine manufacturer.
He said his favorite experiences came in the 16 years he spent working on the 'Tarzan' series.
His favorite stunt came in the movie 'Makow'. In the movie, Stader, doubling for Robert Mitchum, fell from a roof and would have been dashed to pieces on the street below if a canvas awning had not broken his fall.
Stader called it a 'scientific stunt' that was worked out well in advance.
Having been around the stunt business for 48 years, the 'Dean of American Stuntmen' has lasted about twice as long as the average stuntman. He said back and hip injuries are to the stuntman what a knee injury is to a football player.
'Everything has been done.' Stader said of todays' movies. 'The heights may get get higher and maybe they crank their cars a little faster.'
Also noted was the passing of the horse as a requirment for any stuntman worth his salt.
'Motorcycles and cars have replaced the horse. Everybody once had to be able to fall off a horse.' Stader said.
'You have to learn the fundamentals,' he emphasized. The fundamantals include a variety of things from body control to auto mechanics. Stuntmen and stuntwomen must still learn the fundamentals of their death-defying trade from each other and, said Stader, from experience.
