Lada St. Edmund

Lada St. Edmund (also known as Lada Edmund, Jr.) (born April 1, 1947) is an American personal trainer, dancer, singer, actress and stunt performer. St. Edmund became a popular nationally known go-go dancer on the 1965–1966 NBC-TV rock music series Hullabaloo . She later became the highest paid stuntwoman in Hollywood history.

When St. Edmund was a child, she lived with her grandmother on a farm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The farmhands watched boxing on television, which sparked St. Edmund's interest in boxing as an adult. She was a tomboy. She moved to Manhattan with her mother, at the age of nine. She attended ballet classes and at the age of 12 performed in her first Broadway musical.^[1]

St. Edmund married in the late 1970s and moved to Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. She gave birth to a daughter, named Skye. She is divorced and lives in Wayne, New Jersey.^[1]

St. Edmund's theater debut was in the first production of Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway,^{[1] [2] [3]} playing Penelope Ann at the age of 12.^{[1] [4]} Her stage name was Lada Edmund, Jr. She performed in West Side Story , also on Broadway, when she was fifteen,^[1] and also performed in Promises, Promises .^[4]

At seventeen, St. Edmund became a go-go dancer on Hullabaloo .^{[1] [5]} While working on the show, she met Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. During her time at Hullabaloo, she was on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson . She received fan letters, including many from students at Harvard. Donna McKechnie described St. Edmund as having a "Brigitte Bardot look".^[1] She was featured on the cover of TV Guide in June 1965.^[6]

St. Edmund signed a deal with Decca Records in 1966.^[7] Her first single was "I Know Something", which was released in 1966. The single, with the b-side "Once Upon a Time", made the Billboard Pop 100. It was described as being similar to Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'".^[8] She performed on the ABC-TV variety program The Hollywood Palace on October 22, 1966.

After Hullabaloo ended, St. Edmund moved to Hollywood. She starred in the films The Devil's 8 (1969), Out of It (1969), Jump (1971), Savage! (1973) and Act of Vengeance (1974). She also appeared on the short lived ABC-TV anthology series ABC Stage 67 .^{[1] [9] [10]} She struggled to get serious roles in the film industry, often being seen only as a dancer.^[1]

As she struggled to find roles, she met Hal Needham through Dinah Shore.^[2] After her meeting with Needham, and with the encouragement of Burt Reynolds, she studied to be a stunt performer. St. Edmund went on to do stuntwork in Smokey and the Bandit . In 1975, St. Edmund drove a 1972 Mercury to test airbags for Eaton Corporation.^{[1] [4]} She drove the car into a wall going 50 miles per hour (80 km/h).^[4] She was paid 25,000ドル by Allstate and broke her ankles. She performed a motorcycle jump over cars on a television pilot for Evel Knievel, and suffered a compression fracture. She was scheduled to do stuntwork in The Cannonball Run. She was unable to perform one day and the woman who was her stand-in ended up being paralyzed during a scene.^[1] St. Edmund's stunt work eventually made her the highest paid stuntwoman in Hollywood history.^[11]

St. Edmund got involved in personal training in the late 1980s. In the early 2000s, St. Edmund started boxing. She boxed for about six months before stopping. She became a personal trainer. In 2010, she started training to become a boxing referee. She met, and then trained under Mike Rosario.^[1] As a personal trainer, she has a youth training program called Modern Miracles.^{[2] [4]}

• Lada Edmund Jr. at IMDb
• Facebook page

• 1947 births
• 20th-century American actresses
• Actresses from Minneapolis
• American female dancers
• American women pop singers
• American film actresses
• American musical theatre actresses
• American sports coaches
• American stunt performers
• Dancers from New Jersey
• Living people
• People from Wayne, New Jersey
• Women stunt performers
• 21st-century American women

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