- Billy Hickman
- Bill Hickman Biography
- Who Drove The Charger In Bullitt
- Bill Hickman Stunt Driver Videos
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Bill Hickman, the stunt driver from the best car chases ever, including the legendary ones in Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971) Frank Sinatra and his stunt double on the set of The. Bill Hickman. Bill Hickman, born William Hickman, was an American professional stunt driver, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S.
Its tire-smoking, engine-roaring duel is still the one by which all cinematic car chases are measured, and the 1968 Ford Mustang was at the heart of the action. Steve McQueen's dark green fastback, subtly tweaked to fit his personification of cool, is part of automotive lore and central to the Mustang myth.
The movie was Bullitt, released by Warner Brothers/Seven Arts on October 17, 1968. It's 113 minutes long, directed by Peter Yates from a screenplay by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner. The car chase was designed by Carey Loftin. The film starred Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, and Don Gordon. Here is its story:
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San Francisco police Lt. Frank Bullitt has lost a government witness to professional hit men, and he's dead set on getting his hands on the killers. The opportunity for professional redemption arises when he spies the bad guys' black 1968 Dodge Charger R/T 440 in slow-moving San Francisco traffic.
For three and a half minutes, Bullitt's Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 fastback tags behind the big Dodge. While paused at a light the Charger's driver fastens his lap belt with sober deliberateness. The light flips, the driver stands on the Dodge's accelerator, and two celebrated American muscle cars show what they're made of. The chase -- seven glorious minutes' worth -- is on.
Two identical Mustangs and two matching Chargers were used in the Bullitt chase sequence. So that the four-speed Mustang could run more easily with the brawnier four-speed 440 Magnum Charger, Hollywood engineer Max Balchowsky installed a racing cam on both Fords, milled the heads, and modified the ignition and carburetion systems. Additionally, Balchowsky bulked up the suspensions of all four cars for improved strength, handling, and control. One Mustang and one Charger were fitted with a full roll cage.
The chase was shot at normal film speed; there would be no cranked-up footage to jazz audiences. The byword was reality.
Steve McQueen played San Franciscopolice Lt. Frank Bullitt, a man on amission to take down the hit menwho killed a government witness.
Bullitt captures legendary star McQueen at the apex of his popularity and puts him in a milieu he loved in his private life: auto racing. He owned many fast cars and had particular fondness for his barely streetable XKSS Jaguar, which he liked to pilot at breakneck speeds along Sunset and serpentine Mulholland Drive high above Los Angeles. He participated in Sports Car Club of America events, and was an enthusiastic motorcyclist, as well.
McQueen insisted on driving the Mustang during the carefully choreographed pursuit, but when he failed to make a turn after locking up his wheels he sealed the deal for pro driver Bud Ekins, who handled the Mustang during the jouncy maneuvers along San Francisco's famously hilly streets. Stunt driver/actor Bill Hickman piloted the Charger.
Thiruppavai lyrics in tamil pdf. Veteran stunt coordinator Carey Loftin designed the chase, plotting a course along a variety of city avenues and landmarks: Clay & Taylor streets, York Street, Potrero Hill, Kansas Street, Russian Hill, and the bucolic Guadalupe Canyon Parkway. Longtime SF residents will see that the chase is not linear, i.e., the cars jump freely around town from cut to cut. Well, chalk that up to artistic license.
The sounds emitted by the Mustang suggest a lot of double-clutching -- something that would not have been needed with a '68 Ford transmission. McQueen confirmed that the sweet racket of the car's engine and transmission were overdubbed recordings of a Ford GT40 driven at full tilt.
The highest compliment one can offer to Loftin and director Peter Yates is that the chase is completely believable. No 'superhero' stunts, no impossible tricks -- just adrenaline-pumping speed, heightened by razor sharp cinematography (William Fraker) and Oscar-winning editing (Frank Keller), plus multiple points of view: drivers' eye, worm's eye, bird's eye, over the shoulder, close on McQueen and Hickman, and setups that suck us along inches behind the cars' back bumpers. Pat Houstis drove the camera car, which was built atop a Corvette chassis. software, free download music.
Dramatically, the chase works for a multitude of reasons, not least the human silence: neither Bullitt nor the hit men speak, not one syllable -- not when Bullitt's Mustang is momentarily blocked by oncoming traffic, not when the Charger nearly annihilates itself on a guardrail, not when assassin #2 (Paul Genge) loads his Winchester pump and pokes the barrel from the Charger's rear side window -- not even when Bullitt's windshield absorbs a blast of buckshot.
Instead, the soundtrack vibrates with the Charger's thrumming baritone and the hornet-like growl of the Mustang; the squeal of abused rubber; the deep, thudding thumps as the cars repeatedly bottom out on the city's hills; and the harsh reports of the Winchester. The mute concentration of the participants seems to underscore the chilly professionalism of Bullitt and the men he hunts. Deadly pursuit and flight, like rail-splitting or high-iron work, are masculine occupations best performed in silence.
Billy Hickman
The sequence did wonders for the Mustang mythos, of course, and didn't do Charger any harm, either. Ford offered a limited edition anniversary 'Bullitt' Mustang for model-year 2001.
The chase altered the tone of cop films and upped the ante for writers and directors who felt obliged to attempt to surpass it. Some gems came later, notably in The French Connection and The Seven-Ups (both by Bill Hickman). Although the Bullitt chase is no longer the most kinetic in movie history, it almost certainly is still the best.
Bill Hickman Biography
Want to find out more about the Mustang legacy? Follow these links to learn all about the original pony car:
![Stunt Stunt](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2009/02/22/arts/22dave_600.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
- Saddle up for the complete story of America's best-loved sporty car. How the Ford Mustang Works chronicles the legend from its inception in the early 1960s to today's all-new Mustang.
- In 1967, the original pony car was up for its first major revamp. Learn how Ford retooled and updated the 1967-1968 Ford Mustang to meet public expectations and to keep pace with the competition.
- The 1968 Shelby Cobra GT-500KR was no mere Mustang. Check out this muscle car profile, which includes photos and specifications.
Born | William Hickman January 25, 1921 |
---|---|
Died | February 24, 1986 (aged 65) Indio, California, U.S. |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Stunt driver, actor, stunt coordinator |
Years active | 1943–1973 |
Known for | Bullitt, The French Connection, The Seven-Ups |
William Hickman (January 25, 1921 – February 24, 1986) was an American professional stunt driver, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S. Film industry. He is considered one of the film industry's most accomplished stunt drivers. In a film career spanning from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, his body of work included films such as Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups.
Early career and James Dean[edit]
Bill Hickman was already an established stuntman by the time The Wild One was being filmed and his expertise on motorcycles landed him work on the Stanley Kramer production. At some point during the project Hickman was injured and was unable to continue. It is never clear whether he was hurt while filming a stunt for the movie, although one account (by the late Clyde Earl) had him taking a spill in a motorcycle race not connected with the film. However, Hickman is clearly shown in several of the publicity stills from The Wild One.
Hickman spent some of these earlier days as driver and friend to James Dean, driving Dean's Ford station wagon towing Dean's famed 550 Spyder nicknamed “Little Bastard”, and often helping and advising him with his driving technique. He was driving the Ford station wagon and trailer following Dean on the day of his fatal accident and was the first person on the scene.
Hickman was an extra in Dean's 1951 feature movie debut, Fixed Bayonets!. A rare personal quote from Bill on his friendship with Dean: 'In those final days, racing was what he cared about most. I had been teaching him things like how to put a car in a four-wheel drift, but he had plenty of skill of his own. If he had lived he might have become a champion driver. We had a running joke, I'd call him Little Bastard and he'd call me Big Bastard. I never stop thinking of those memories.'
In another interview with James Dean expert Warren Beath, Hickman is quoted as saying, 'We were about two or three minutes behind him. I pulled him out of the car, and he was in my arms when he died, his head fell over. I heard the air coming out of his lungs the last time. Didn’t sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs.'
Stuntman work in Bullitt[edit]
![Bill Hickman Stunt Driver Bill Hickman Stunt Driver](https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/hickman.gif?resize=319%2C240)
Who Drove The Charger In Bullitt
While Hickman had many small acting (mainly driving) parts throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he worked primarily as a stuntman. He sustained a couple of significant injuries during this time, including breaking several ribs in a bad trick-fall in the film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965). However, it was the iconic car chase alongside Steve McQueen in the classic 1968 film Bullitt for which he is usually remembered. Hickman was to do all his own driving; portraying one of two hit men, he drove an all black 1968 Dodge Charger 440 Magnum R/T through the streets of San Francisco, using the hills as jumps.
In a nice professional driver's touch (before compulsory restraints were introduced in California), Hickman's character buckles his seat belt before flooring it at the beginning of the pursuit by the Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT, driven by Steve McQueen, thereby indicating to the audience that we are about to go on a truly wild ride.If you drove a MOPAR in those days, unlike slack and loose seatbelts of today, the seatbelts bolted you to the vehicle. If you had a manual trans, one could focus on driving and shifting, keeping the car under control, instead of worrying about sliding around in your seat. As reported in the Denver Post, while filming, the brakes on the Charger went out during the chase segment.
In those pre-digital days, the dangers were real: in one shot Hickman accidentally loses control and clips the camera fixed to a parked car. The chase climaxes with his Charger careening off into a gas station at which the fuel pumps erupt into a massive fireball.
Prior to the filming of the chase sequence, Hickman and McQueen did endless days of high-speed, close-quarter driving in practice for the actual chase. Comments and film of Bill talking about his work are few and far between, although in the featurette shot at the time, Bullitt: Steve McQueen’s Commitment To Reality, Bill can be seen discussing the chase with McQueen on location.
The French Connection[edit]
Another of the memorable moments in Hickman's career was when he was asked to perform a high-risk car-chase scene by William Friedkin for his 1971 film The French Connection. As with Bullitt, The French Connection (also produced by Bullitt's producer, Philip D'Antoni) is famed for its car-chase sequence. What differs from the usual car chase is that Gene Hackman’s character is chasing an elevated train from the street below (the scene was filmed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, with most of the action taking place on 86th Street). This chase was performed in real traffic, as Hickman drove the brown 1971 Pontiac LeMans at speeds up to 90 mph with Friedkin manning the camera right behind him, and at one point Hickman hits a car driven by a local man on his way to work who wandered into the scene. [1]This scene was kept in the film by Friedkin as it added reality to the whole sequence, however, the scene where the woman steps out into the street with a baby carriage was staged. Hickman also had a supporting role in the film as federal agent Mulderig (at constant odds with Hackman's Popeye Doyle).
The Seven-Ups[edit]
Hickman performed yet another memorable chase sequence for the 1973 film The Seven-Ups (in which Hickman again worked with Philip D'Antoni, who had also produced Bullitt and The French Connection). In The Seven-Ups, Hickman drove the car being chased by the star of the film, Roy Scheider, who is heavily doubled by Hickman's good friend and fellow stuntman, Jerry Summers. The chase itself leans heavily on the Bullitt chase, with the two cars bouncing down the gradients of uptown New York (à la San Francisco's steep hills) with Hickman's 1973 Pontiac Grand Ville pursued at wheel-breaking speed by Scheider's Pontiac Ventura.
Even the engines of Scheider's Pontiac and McQueen's Mustang sound alike, and during the car chases in both films there is an almost complete lack of dialogue, although the reason why these chases work so well (and why Hickman himself was so highly regarded) is their gritty realism and the danger of each tire-busting slide, accompanied by close camera angles and camera-cars moving at high speed and parallel to the action car so you actually get to see the nervous faces of the actors behind the wheel.
In the accompanying behind-the-scenes featurette of the 2006 DVD, Hickman can be seen co-ordinating the chase from the street, where we also see another example of how memorable (and dangerous) these sequences were: on cue, a stuntman in a parked car opens his door, only to have Hickman's vehicle take it completely off its hinges, where (from the behind-the-scenes footage) we see the door fly off at such a force it could easily have killed the close-quarter camera team set-up only yards away (it missed them only by chance). The end of the chase was Bill's own idea, an 'homage' to the death of Jayne Mansfield, where one of the cars smashes into the back of an eighteen-wheel truck, peeling off its roof like a tin of sardines.
Later work[edit]
Hickman moved on to more stunt coordination work in films as the 1970s wound down, notably The Hindenburg and Capricorn One. He staged the motorcycle chase in Electra Glide In Blue, starring Robert Blake, and also appeared as a driver in the 1969 Disney film The Love Bug and as the military driver for George C. Scott in the Academy Award-winning movie Patton.
Hickman had many bit parts in classic television series of the 1950s and 1960s, such as The Man from UNCLE and Batman (TV series). In one year (1957), he had the rare distinction of being cast as the assailant who slices Frank Sinatra’s vocal chords in The Joker Is Wild and whips Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock.
Death[edit]
Bill Hickman Stunt Driver Videos
Bill Hickman died of cancer in 1986 at the age of 65 in Indio, California.
Credited acting roles[edit]
- Salute to the Marines (1943) - Marine (uncredited)
- See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) - (uncredited)
- The Beginning or the End (1947) - Barometric Observer (uncredited)
- It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) - Passerby on Street (uncredited)
- Tulsa (1949) - Bill, the Caterpillar tractor driver at oilfield fire (uncredited)
- To Please a Lady (1950) - Mike's Pit Crew
- Meet Me After the Show (1951) - Court Bailiff (uncredited)
- Iron Man (1951) - Fight Crowd Spectator (uncredited)
- Angels in the Outfield (1951) - 1st Reporter (uncredited)
- The Unknown Man (1951) - Reporter in Courtroom (uncredited)
- Fixed Bayonets! (1951) - (uncredited)
- Because You're Mine (1952) - G.I. (uncredited)
- My Pal Gus (1952) - Courtroom Photographer (uncredited)
- Code Two (1953) - Motorcycle Officer (uncredited)
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - Ship Passenger (uncredited)
- Loophole (1954) - Bank Customer (uncredited)
- Lucky Me (1954) - Passerby on Street / Diner (uncredited)
- Woman's World (1954) - Restaurant Patron (uncredited)
- Phffft (1954) - Studio Technician (uncredited)
- A Bullet for Joey (1955) - Macklin's bodyguard / driver (uncredited)
- The Far Horizons (1955) - Member of the expedition (uncredited)
- Love Me or Leave Me (1955) - Nightclub Patron (uncredited)
- He Laughed Last (1956) - Bartender (uncredited)
- The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956) - Moviegoer at Premiere (uncredited)
- Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957) - Party Guest (uncredited)
- Appointment with a Shadow (1957) - Farrell - Police Detective (uncredited)
- The Joker Is Wild (1957) - Hood with Knife (uncredited)
- The Helen Morgan Story (1957) - Party Guest (uncredited)
- Raintree County (1957) - Townsman (uncredited)
- Jailhouse Rock (1957) - Guard Who Whips Vince (uncredited)
- Kiss Them for Me (1957) - Party Guest (uncredited)
- Houseboat (1958) - Handsome Man (uncredited)
- The Mating Game (1959) - Fleeing Office Worker (uncredited)
- The Beat Generation (1959) - Man in Lineup (uncredited)
- Don't Give Up the Ship (1959) - Guardsman (uncredited)
- Home from the Hill (1960) - Bartender (uncredited)
- Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) - Driver in Bird Walk Scene (uncredited)
- Johnny Cool (1963) - Minor Role (uncredited)
- Take Her, She's Mine (1963) - Wolf-Whistler Who Drives Into Mailbox (uncredited)
- Point Blank (1967) - Reese's Guard on Balcony (uncredited)
- Bullitt (1968) - Phil
- The Love Bug (1968) - Driver #8
- Patton (1970) - Patton's Driver
- Zabriskie Point (1970) - Gun store owner / Clerk (uncredited)
- The French Connection (1971) - Bill Mulderig
- The War Between Men and Women (1972) - Large Gentleman
- Hickey & Boggs (1972) - Monte
- The Seven-Ups (1973) - Bo (final film role)
References[edit]
Stunt Driver Download
External links[edit]
- Bill Hickman on IMDb
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