Failing His Way to Superstardom

Sometimes failure can be a good thing. Yea, I know it doesn’t always seem like it at the time, but what if I told you one of the greatest superstars of the ’70s built an entire career on failure?

For a decade, the only person in the world as famous as this guy was Muhammed Ali. Yet unlike “The Greatest,” who built his fame on winning, what made this guy one of the wealthiest athletes/entertainers in the world were his spectacular failures. Literally, without his dramatic failures he might have had his 15 minutes of fame and been gone.

After a decade of performing at second-rate county shows, he was ready for the big time. In 1967 having gone to great lengths to pull off a motorcycle jump over Creaser Palace fountains by pretending to be several different lawyers and TV executives, he had his chance.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports declined to film the jump when offered, however, they told the rider that if he paid to film it himself and it was successful, they might buy it.

So he hired friend and director John Derek to film the event. In order to save money, Derek asked his then-wife Linda Evans to man the second camera. That camera positioned at the end of the far runway captured the rider’s spectacular cash. ABC ultimately paid ten times what they would have for the footage had he made the jump successfully, playing…