"Bones hurt every night whether I take a fall or not," he said. If an arm hurts, he might rub on a little Tiger Balm. If his head throbs, he might take some prescription pain medication. Otherwise, he added, being a stuntman beats pumping gas.
"Eddy is probably one of a handful of stuntmen over 70 that can still perform the big car crashes and loves to do it," said veteran stuntman Jack Gill.
But much has changed since Donno set out in the business. For one thing, he said, today's performers take better care of themselves. "I didn't have a gym when I did this stuff in the beginning," he recalled. "You didn't see a cowboy go to a gym. You'd go to a bar. These guys today, when they get done shooting, they have their own gym in their hotel room. They go to the gym first, God bless 'em."
Donno said he stays in shape by spending an hour in the morning at the gym, punching a bag for 20 minutes and sitting in the sauna.
A chance encounter with his fate
In the old days, Donno often performed a stunt trick used in westerns called the "Running W." It was particularly cruel to the horses -- and dangerous for riders -- and wouldn't be tolerated today. "They would run the horse as fast at it goes while its hoof was tied to a cable, and then the cable would come to an end, the horse would stumble, and you'd fly over the head," Donno said.
"You jack your feet up in the stirrups so you're sitting like a jockey, and you're leaning forward, so when the horse goes down it just pitches you right out. I could land on my feet and keep on running."
The boy from South Philadelphia might never have become a stuntman had he not decided to stop off in Brackettville, Texas, to visit his boyhood friend Frankie Avalon on the set of "The Alamo," which John Wayne starred in and directed. Donno had been on his way to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a famous singer like South Philly greats Eddie Fisher, Bobby Rydell and Mario Lanza.
But in Brackettville, someone asked Donno if he could stand in as a rider. "They put me on a horse, and when I screwed the scene up, Wayne said, 'Who the hell is that? How long has he been riding a horse?' " When Wayne heard that Donno's entire experience astride a horse was three minutes, the director told the stunt coordinator, "When we ride, mount him up."
Donno became a close friend of Wayne during the years they spent riding, shooting and barroom brawling in such pictures as "Big Jake," "Chisum" and "The Comancheros."
