Thursday, November 15, 2018
Harassed Out of Hollywood: A Veteran Stuntwoman Reflects on Life in the Movies and on the Blacklist
themuse.jezebel.com: Throughout the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, Jean Coulter was a leading stuntwoman in Hollywood, racking up hundreds of credits on shows like Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman, M*A*S*H*, and Days of Our Lives. She is perhaps most recognizable from Jaws 2, in which she played the ski boat driver who attempts to set the villainous shark on fire. Coulter rarely acted; she preferred to stick to stunts where her likeness was obscured and tailored to be indistinguishable from the stars for which she doubled. She worked in the shadows and experienced routine sexual harassment on set. She was among the first women in Hollywood to speak out about it publicly—in the 1980s she filed a lawsuit against stunt coordinator Roy Harrison and Spelling-Goldberg Productions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Wow, what an awful thing for such an amazing woman to go through. And then, casually at the end, she mentions that she’s fighting cancer for the fifth time. It is pretty heartbreaking to read about how the hope that she and her colleagues had for their careers was totally quashed by piggish executives. We have all, over the past couple of years, read so much about how the film industry treats women, but at least there appears to be some progress being made. In Coulter’s era, she fought tooth and nail to not bow to the pressure, and to prove her facility in her jobs, and to make progress for women in her field, and it all fell apart overnight. All of her battles were fought twenty years before there was anyone else ready to be on her side, and it all came to naught. I hope we’ve learned, and I hope this time around, we can make some genuine progress.
Reading about the woman's career was really fascinating, and I would love to read more about her and other stuntwomen of the era. That said, Jean Coulter's account of harassment during her time working in the industry is very upsetting. She describes the period of harassment saying, "During the ’60s and ’70s, I was regularly sexually harassed on set, but I had a knack for dealing with that. I could smile and laugh and make everybody like me. When they made those jokes about my body or whatever, I would say something funny. For a long time, I could get around the guys coming onto me. Of course, in the end, I didn’t." Even worse, she follows up with this statement: "When I showed up on set, respect wasn’t a given—I had to repeatedly prove myself in order to earn it. I found a lot of men had contempt for me until they got to know me. Then I wouldn’t have a problem anymore. I become like their little sister." The idea that you have to be funny and joke it off or earn respect and the only way you can be safe is to be considered someone's sister is just enough to make my blood boil. Why do I have to be your little sister in order for you to not objectify me and harass me? Don't I have my own merit has a human being without having to smile at you or make you feel that I need your protection?
Post a Comment