“Well, of course, I was mainly identified with circus life before the movies got me, but there are lots of gymnasiums scattered about the country, in which my name used to be revered as athletic instructor, and some of the boys that I started on the road to fame have won big prizes.” — Eddie Polo
Source: Lillian Conlon (1917)
“Some directors are satisfied with a sort of impressionistic fight, but Universal serial producers can’t be fooled. Jacques Jaccard, who did ‘Liberty,’ and Stuart Paton, who had just finished ‘The Gray Ghost,’ insist upon a fight as is a fight. They are both the sort that inspire their players, and when I meet a dozen men for a big fight scene in one of our serials, I know I’ve been up against something when it’s over. They scrap as if they mean it, and I have to use all I know of the noble arts of boxing and wrestling to come out victorious, as the script demands.” — Eddie Polo
Source: Lillian Conlon (1917)
“Well, eighty feet doesn’t look so much to a fellow who has been a balloonist and parachute-dropper, after all, you know. I once caused a slight ripple in Paris by circling the Eiffel Tower in an airplane and then dropping in a parachute, a distance of more than a thousand feet. Sometimes I think that the big show over there will get me. My people have done wonders, and it seems as if there might be a bit that I could do for them.” — Eddie Polo
Source: Lillian Conlon (1917)
“I’m an American in sympathy and by adoption, but I was born in Italy. They begin young over there. I started my training when I was three. By the time I was four I could walk on my hands. I can’t remember when I began to learn to make falls and turn somersaults in the air, and I believe I could swim by nature, as a dog does.” — Eddie Polo, who was really born Edward W. Wyman in San Francisco.
Source: Lillian Conlon (1917)
“By the way, I was the first man to catch a fellow-acrobat after a triple somersault in the air. You might put that in your interview. It doesn’t sound much to the layman, but the men in the profession will know what it means. The first time I tried it, I misjudged the tumbler, and he got me square in the mouth and knocked out about half my teeth. Since then I have experienced some of the most terrific falls that have ever happened to a man – and still come off alive. They say my falls off sheer precipices in Motion Pictures have made me famous – pshaw! it’s all in a day’s work.” — Eddie Polo
Source: Lillian Conlon (1917)
