Spyder Electra

Spyder Electra

Bill Hickman

Early career and James Dean

Bill Hickman spent most of his career as a stunt driver, and was involved in the now legendary car chase scenes from Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, all shot on actual city streets. Bill spent some of his earlier days as driver and friend to James Dean, driving Dean's Ford station wagon towing his famed 550 spyder nicknamed ittle 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 first 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 sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs."

Stuntman work in Bullitt

While Hickman had many small acting (mainly driving) parts throughout the 50s and 60s, he mostly paid his bills with his stuntwork. 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."

However, it was the landmark car chase alongside Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt which he is usually remembered. Bill was to do all his own driving; portraying one of two hit men, he drove a 1968 Dodge Charger 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 Bullitt's car, thereby indicating to the audience that we are about to go on a truly wild ride.

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 and erupting in a massive fireball. (Unfortunately the remotely-aimed Charger glides slightly off course and can just be glimpsed passing behind the gas station instead of running into it: had Hickman been behind the wheel he would have struck it dead on). 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 Commitment To Reality he can be seen discussing the chase with McQueen on location.

The French Connection

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 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 involved real traffic and at one point Bill hits a car driven by a fellow stunt driver who missed his point, 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 even though years of debate thought it to be a real incident with the woman being unaware of the filming process, the fact she was captured from multiple angles including a close up of her facial reaction to seeing Bill car bearing down on her lends itself to being a staged event, although a very realistic one (This of course has as much to do with the Academy Award winning editing in that scene, done by Jerry Greenberg, as the driving by Hickman). Hickman also had a supporting role in the film as federal agent Mulderig, who played an antagonist of sorts to Gene Hackman's character.

The Seven Ups

Bill performed yet another memorable chase sequence for the little known 1973 film The Seven-Ups (in which again Hickman worked with Philip D'Antoni, who had also produced Bullitt and The French Connection) in which he drove the car being chased by the star of that 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 ( la San Francisco's steep hills) with Hickman's 1973 Pontiac Grandville pursued at wheel-breaking speed by Scheider's Pontiac Ventura. Even the engines sound alike - Scheider's Pontiac and McQueen's Mustang; added to which there is an almost complete lack of dialogue. But the reason why these chases work so well (and why Bill himself was so highly-regarded) is down to their gritty realism and 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 parked car opens his door, only for Hickman's vehicle to 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

Bill moved on to more stunt coordination work in films as the 1970s wound down, The Hindenburg and Capricorn One notably. 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 (which later aired on NBC as part of The Wonderful World of Disney in 1979) and as the military driver for George C. Scott in the Academy award-winning movie Patton. He had many bit parts in classic television series of the 50s and 60s, such as The Man from UNCLE.

Death

Bill Hickman died of cancer in 1986 at the age of 65. His legacy leaves behind some unforgettable films with some of the best examples of car control ever to be seen on screen.

External links

Bill Hickman @ The Internet Movie Database

Bill Hickman interview

Categories: American film actors | American stunt performers | 1921 births | 1986 deaths
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