WWLMD? All my life, I have tried to live up to a certain standard as if an indelible code has been forever imprinted on my soul. Sure, you can choose to float through this world like a twig in a flooded gutter or you can take a stand and actually believe in something. I, for one, have pledged my allegiance to a way of living that has at its heart certain principles – gallantry, nobility and high quality stunt-work. Is it a cult? Perhaps. Is it an organized religion? There’s nothing organized about it. It is, in fact, a simple question that has guided me through my life so far. That question is: WWLMD? Or, to set it out in full – what would Lee Majors do?
WWLMD? All my life, I have tried to live up to a certain standard as if an indelible code has been forever imprinted on my soul. Sure, you can choose to float through this world like a twig in a flooded gutter or you can take a stand and actually believe in something. I, for one, have pledged my allegiance to a way of living that has at its heart certain principles – gallantry, nobility and high quality stunt-work. Is it a cult? Perhaps. Is it an organized religion? There’s nothing organized about it. It is, in fact, a simple question that has guided me through my life so far. That question is: WWLMD? Or, to set it out in full – what would Lee Majors do?
I didn’t have too many heroes growing up. I idolized The Beatles but they’d already well and truly split. My favourite footballer was Carlton’s Rod Ashman but I have no idea why. I suspect it was a random selection. I was probably engaged in some high-level football card swap – maybe down by the oval, maybe behind the shelter shed – when I was pressed to give an answer. Rod was a short, slightly stocky utility player with a beard and looked like he should have been playing bass for The Little River Band. My real heroes were, in truth, all on television. And of all the heroes I found on the little screen, none was more important than Lee Majors.
I first encountered him as Colonel Steve Austin through The Six Million Dollar Man. So far as I was concerned, he was worth every cent. An astronaut severely injured in an accident, he was rebuilt with a series of bionic parts picked up from the local Tandy outlet. The use of the bionic powers was always accompanied by a distinct sound effect and slow motion camera work. Once the sound effect took hold and everything slowed down, you knew Lee was about to let the bad guys have it. Most significantly of all, he did it whilst wearing a stylish nylon tracksuit. As I too owned a nylon tracksuit, I sometimes thought that I might also have bionic powers. To this day, I do nearly all my running in slow motion.
Such was the success of The Six Million Dollar Man that it produced not only lunch boxes and thermoses emblazoned with Lee’s image but a spin-off series. Just as Happy Days begat Laverne and Shirley, Cheers begat Frasier and The Nuremburg Trials begat Big Brother; The Six Million Dollar Man gave us the Bionic Woman. But bionic or not, the one thing Lee couldn’t leap over were low ratings and both shows were cancelled in 1978.
Some lights burn too bright and cannot be ignored. So it was with Lee Majors who would rise phoenix-like from the ashes of The Six Million Dollar Man and become The Fall Guy. In his new show, Lee may have looked, sounded and acted exactly like Steve Austin but he was, in fact, ‘Colt Seavers’ who, with his trusty side-kick ‘Howie Munson’ would roam around the countryside in a Ute picking up crooks for parole violation in exchange for money. Charming. It must be said that with names like ‘Colt Seavers’ and ‘Howie Munson’, there must have been a rule in the early eighties that all television characters had to be named as if they were part of the adult entertainment industry.
Classic shows of the era – The A-Team, A Country Practice, maybe even The Love Boat – were all about action. It was here that The Fall Guy’s premise came to glorious fruition. As a stuntman, it stood to reason that Lee would perform a whole bunch of stunts. This was hugely influential in the playground as my classmates goaded each other into performing acts of insanity. Generally, this involved going ‘tree to tree’, which required you to get from one end of the playground to the other without touching the ground. This necessitated throwing yourself from one limb to another, forever at the risk of plunging to the earth. If not for Lee, I can honestly say that I’d never have gone ‘tree to tree’.
But if working a second job as, ostensibly, some kind of paid vigilante doesn’t sound like much of a role model, then take a closer look. The splendour started with the show’s theme song ‘The Unknown Stuntman’, performed by Lee Majors himself. To be frank, Lee had the kind of pipes that, in ‘the Voice’ terms, would be unlikely to turn any of those big red chairs, but it mattered not. Rather, it’s the fact that Lee was willing to turn his hand to anything that I admired. I doubt it stopped there. He probably did the catering too, preparing sandwiches and fruit platters for the cast and crew each evening. It’s true, thought, that Lee always invested his characters with a certain quality: namely, immobility. Blessed with the constitution of a concrete wombat, there wasn’t a blow Lee couldn’t absorb without a hair losing its place.
I learned a lot from him. He wasn’t the greatest of actors but he was prepared to have a go. When things are difficult and obstacles seem insurmountable, I often find myself taking a deep breath and asking: what would Lee Majors do? Then, I take a step back and jump – in glorious slow motion whilst making a strange sound effect noise – right over all my troubles. Because, when all is said and done, it’s not about being bionic. It’s just about giving it your best.