S. TRUE SMITH

S. True Smith was born Andreas Peter Verdonk in Breda, Netherlands. At the age of 17 he fled his native land and joined the United States Army, changing his name to Stephan True Smith. After leaving the Army he became a sheet metal factory worker, a dogcatcher and a pet cemetery proprietor before finding work with a carnival troop.

After several years of traveling throughout the country S.T. found himself in New Jersey where he worked briefly as an entertainment manager at a hotel before moving to Manhattan and finding a position as a bouncer and doorman at Lindy’s restaurant near 50th and Broadway.

It wasn’t long before S.T. was spotted by Carol Cook, a female professional wrestler who gave him the opportunity to wrestle on television as “The Thunderbolt Kid.” This hatched the acting bug in young Smitty, and he was soon finding work from film studios as a bit part player, stuntman, and body double.

Between 1956 and 1962, S.T. appeared in a number of movies, including WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (as a courtroom extra), BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (as a P.O.W.) and EL CID (as a Spanish mercenary). He also appeared in television shows such as One Step Beyond, Crackerjack, Dark Shadows, and The Benny Hill Show.

Smith invested the money he made from these ventures in his own entertainment transport business. As acting gigs became scarce, Smith found he was making more cash chauffeuring groups to their concerts — and the most ambitious of these up-and-coming young bands was a young band of ruffians called The Get Quick.

Mercenary in Polyester

Nobody ever called him Andreas Peter Verdonk after 1952, not unless they wanted a fractured jaw or a ten-minute monologue on the pitfalls of post-war European identity. Born in the quiet grey of Breda, Netherlands, he bolted the flatlands at seventeen, trading windmills for dog tags and the muddy certainties of a U.S. Army contract. By the time he hit Fort Bragg, he was Stefan True Smith — three names that sounded like a pulp hero and stuck like blood on a bayonet.

Post-discharge, came the carnival...

It was all sawdust and greasepaint for a few years, up and down Route 66 with a half-mad troop of strongmen, fire-eaters, and tattooed philosophers. That’s where he learned how to take a punch, how to vanish a rabbit, and — most crucially — how to spot a mark in a crowd in under ten seconds. He emerged from the freak tents with a new swagger and a suitcase full of IOUs, eventually landing in New Jersey, where he worked the door at a hotel ballroom with all the greasy charm of a bootlegging lounge lizard.

Then came Carol Cook — not the actress, the lady wrestler, known on the circuit as The Blonde Bulldozer. She spotted the barrel-chested S.T. tossing out drunks like sandbags and offered him a slot on the undercard of a regional TV taping in Yonkers. Overnight, he became The Thunderbolt Kid, a Technicolor bruiser with lightning bolts on his trunks and a wicked grin that made the studio audience howl. Wrestling, as it turned out, was his gateway drug.

Then Hollywood came sniffing.

Between ’56 and ’62, he was a nobody who showed up everywhere. A P.O.W. in Bridge on the River Kwai. A mercenary in El Cid. A blur in the jury box during Witness for the Prosecution. You’d swear you saw him in Crackerjack and One Step Beyond, and you probably did. S.T. wasn’t an actor so much as a cinematic cipher, the guy who stood just to the left of the action, flexing like old lion, doing all the heavy lifting while the handsome stars hit their marks.

Then Smith drifted into what all the savvy ex-grunts and part time-stuntmen did: he started driving. Entertainment transport, he called it, but really it was glorified babysitting for jazzmen, doo-wop outfits, and sideburned young greasers jawing on amphetamines. And what did he find? The Get Quick — a snarling, reckless band of rootless rockers with big ambitions and no working brakes.

S.T. saw them play once and knew they’d either burn out fast or summon the End Times for everyone, and either way, he wanted in. He became their unofficial fixer, muscle, chauffeur, and occasionally, father figure — navigating hotel lobby freak-outs, bad romances, label sabotage, and the kind of inter-band bickering that made a Hells Angels hazing look like a garden party.

He was the tall man in the front seat, the broad-shouldered shadow in the wings, the one with the key to the van and a flask full of bourbon wisdom. S. True Smith: ex-dogcatcher, cinematic phantom, Thunderbolt Kid, and the only man who could keep The Get Quick from detonating mid-tour.

— Mark Question, 2011