Robert Craig Knievel was a small town hustler from Butte, Mont. He once organized a minor league hockey team and managed to get the Czech National Team to play them. Then he absconded with their share of the gate receipts. He started a hunting tour business that lasted until the feds found him leading his customers into Yellowstone. And he once made a big splash working as a salesman for Combined Insurance. He sold 271 policies in one day…..at a psychiatric hospital.

But then Robert Craig Knievel became Evel Knieval, motorcycle daredevil. He was the star attraction of ABC’s popular Wide World of Sports. Ideal Toys sold something like $300 million worth of the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle toy. He became an action figure, a hero to boys throughout the U.S.

“He successfully jumped his motorcycle 275 times, but crash landed into fame with the 15 he didn’t.” (Jake Nichols. Cowboy State Daily, Sept.  2, 2023)

His most celebrated failures:

“The first of Evel Knievel’s most famous stunts occurred on New Year’s Eve 1967 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The stunt involved an attempted 141 ft. (43m) motorcycle jump over the hotel’s iconic fountain. It did not go as planned, with Knievel coming off the bike on landing and suffering a crushed pelvis and femur, fractures to various bones, and severe concussion. After ABC bought the crash footage and televised it, Knievel’s fame went to a whole new level.

“Other famous failed Knievel stunts include the time he tried and failed to fly across Idaho’s Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket, and the time he tried and failed to jump a motorbike across 13 single-decker buses in front of a crowd of 90,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium.” (Jack Clayton, April 13, 2018, mpora.com)

After the 1975 London stunt, Knievel announced he was through. Sort of.

The meteoric rise would soon  be followed by an equally dramatic fall. “Of all the bones Evel Knievel broke through the years, the costliest may have been the left arm of a PR man by the name of Shelly Saltman.” (AP, Dec. 4, 2007). Saltman was supposedly a friend of Knievel’s and was one of his promoters. But in 1977, he wrote a book about the Evel one with some unflattering commentary that infuriated Knievel.

“…the death-defying motorcyclist approached Saltman in the parking lot of 20th Century Fox on Sept. 21, 1977, and suddenly started swinging a bat. Saltman, then a studio executive, raised his arm to protect his head, a move he says doctors told him probably saved his life. His arm was shattered and is held together to this day with a steel plate and screws.” (AP, Dec. 4, 2007)

Saltman would eventually get a $12.75 million settlement.

“During the ensuing trial, Knievel fired his attorney, pleaded guilty and says, given the chance, he would do it again. He’s sentenced to six months in jail for felony assault, served nights and weekends.

“But the end is near. Ideal pulls Knievel toys and cancels all licensing with the aging star. Revenue streams dry up, the wheels come off and Knievel withdraws from the public eye as most of his assets are sold or repossessed.”  (Jake Nichols. Cowboy State Daily, Sept.  2, 2023) By 1981 he would file for bankruptcy.

But chaos would continue to follow Knievel. 

In 1982, Ed Bouchette, who would later write about the incident in the Athletic (June 9, 2020), found Knievel parked in a motor home outside Keystone Raceway in Westmoreland County, Pa., where a poster announced “Can You Beat Evel Knievel?”

Bouchette’s attempt at an interview went like this:

“In the midst of him regaling me with stories, a thud struck the side of the home, along with a man shouting from outside. A few more thuds and loud angry words and Evel excused himself to see what was going on. I followed. An angry man with a rock in his hand stood outside. He hollered at Knievel, said he had beaten the celebrity fair and square in the match race and wanted his money. Knievel tried to explain that the man lost on some technicality. The angry competitor was having none of it and squared off against Knievel, who once spent six months in prison for beating his press agent with a baseball bat.” Apparently they came to some sort of agreement before things escalated any further.

“In 1986, he was fined $200 in Kansas City, Mo., on charges of soliciting an undercover policewoman for immoral purposes.” (Richard Severo, Dec. 1, 2007, New York Times)

On Oct. 11, 1994, this story appeared in the Carroll County Times (Westminster, Md.):

“Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel was arrested for allegedly beating a woman companion, police said Monday. Knieval, 55, was arrested Sunday night after police answered a disturbance call at a motel and found a 25-year-old Florida woman with redness and swelling on her face and neck. She said the former motorcycle stuntman had hit her during an argument.”

AP filed this story on Sept. 25, 1995:

“Superior Court Judge William Martin ordered the 56-year-old ex-daredevil (real name: Robert Craig Knievel) to spend 200 hours coaching youngsters on the importance of bicycle helmets. ‘It’s a tough law,’ Knievel told Martin in pleading no contest Friday to keeping a .44 Magnum handgun, a .38-caliber revolver, two knives and a stun gun in his car trunk. Police found the cache last year after his arrest on a charge of battering his girlfriend. Krystal Kennedy, 25, later dismissed their fight as a ‘tussle,’ and was at Knievel’s side in court.”

Kennedy was at his side again in 1999 in Las Vegas.

“At the same fountains where he crashed 32 years ago, Knievel tied the knot Friday with Crystal Kennedy at Caesars Palace hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Knievel, 61, arrived at the ceremony on a motorcycle, then waited for his 30-year-old bride, who was escorted by Caesar and Cleopatra, of course. Knievel, who underwent a lifesaving liver transplant earlier this year, said he wanted to start his new life in Las Vegas, where his career began. ‘Thanks for meeting my beautiful little wife Crystal,’ Knievel said to the crowd of several hundred that gathered to witness the nuptials.” (Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, Dec. 21 1999)

Knievel had divorced Linda, his wife of 38 years, with whom he had four children, in 1997. Kennedy divorced him two years after they were married and got a restraining order against him. But they eventually reconciled and got back together.

By 2007. Knievel was in serious condition. Salon’s Joshua Seftel (Dec. 5, 2007) made this attempt at an interview: 

“’This will be your chance to talk about hepatitis C,’ I told him. ‘A way to promote the issue and to help people.’ Evel explained that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He needed a new liver and there was a good chance he would die. He joked that this was his latest stunt, something his doctor liked to call ‘Snake Liver Canyon.’ The problem was, Evel wasn’t joking. As with all his other death-defying stunts, Knievel wasn’t about to undergo liver transplant surgery for free. He wanted to be paid for it.”

One of Knievel’s last encounters was with the artist formerly known as Kanye West. West had released a music video “Touch the Sky” in which he portrays himself as “Evel Kanyevel.”

“Knievel filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement relating to his name and likeness, calling the clip ‘vulgar and offensive’ and damaging to his reputation. Keep in mind this is a dude who leaped things on motorcycles for a living.

“‘That video that Kanye West put out is the most worthless piece of crap I’ve ever seen in my life, and he uses my image to catapult himself on the public,’ he ranted at the time.

“’The guy just went too far using me to promote his filth to the world. I’m not in any way that kind of a person.’” (Nathan Jolly, The Music Network, July 27, 2018)

Knievel seems to have put the vitriol aside and the two claimed to have settled amicably. Shortly afterward, Knievel passed away.

On Dec. 1, 2007, the New York Times published this story by Richard Severo:

“Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

“Mr. Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999, he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted from a blood transfusion after one of his many violent spills.”

But the Evel Knievel legacy (and the hustle) lives on through his family. This press release was issued in February of this year:

“DESTIHL Brewery and K and K Promotions Inc (The Evel Knievel Family) are leaping to new heights together with a spectacular beer project. True Evel American Blonde Ale and Evel Knievel Imperial IPA will be making the jump to store beer shelves across the USA in the coming weeks! (https://www.brewbound.com/news/destihl-brewery-and-evel-knievel-family-announce-beer-partnership/)

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