Bill Hickman
Encyclopedia
William "Bill" Hickman was a stunt driver/actor from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. Hickman played a major role in terms of development and execution in three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time.
, 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 “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 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’t sleep for five or six nights after that, just the sound of the air coming out of his lungs."
However, it was the landmark car chase alongside Steve McQueen
in the 1968 film Bullitt
for 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. 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 he can be seen discussing the chase with McQueen on location.
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, 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. Hickman also had a supporting role in the film as federal agent Mulderig, who played an antagonist
of sorts to Gene Hackman
's character.
(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 (à 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 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 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.
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
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.
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 BullittBullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
, The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
and The Seven-Ups
The Seven-Ups
The Seven-Ups is a 1973 American film released by 20th Century Fox. It stars Roy Scheider as a renegade policeman who is the leader of The Seven-Ups, a police team who uses dirty, unorthodox tactics to snare their quarry on charges leading to prison sentences of seven years or more upon...
, all shot on actual city streets. Bill spent some of his earlier days as driver and friend to James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
, driving Dean's Ford station wagon towing his 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 first on the scene. Hickman was an extra in Dean's 1951 feature movie debut Fixed Bayonets!
Fixed Bayonets!
Fixed Bayonets! is a war film written and directed by Samuel Fuller and produced by Twentieth Century-Fox during the Korean War. It is Fuller's second film about the Korean War. In his motion picture debut, James Dean appears briefly in the film....
.
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
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
Steve McQueen
Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
in the 1968 film Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
for 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. 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 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 FriedkinWilliam Friedkin
William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...
for his 1971 film The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
. As with Bullitt, The French Connection (also produced by Bullitt's producer, Philip D'Antoni
Philip D'Antoni
-Work:D'Antoni won an Academy Award in 1971 for the Best Picture, for The French Connection. He also won a Golden Globe award in 1972 for the Best Motion Picture Drama for The French Connection. He began his career on TV with the glamorous productions, "Sophia Loren in Rome," "Elizabeth Taylor in...
) 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
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
Bensonhurst is a neighborhood located in the southwestern part of the New York City borough of Brooklyn.-Geography:Sometimes erroneously thought to include all or parts of such neighborhoods as Bath Beach, Dyker Heights, and Borough Park, or to be defined by the streets where the concentration of...
, with most of the action taking place on 86th Street). This chase was performed in 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. Hickman also had a supporting role in the film as federal agent Mulderig, who played an antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...
of sorts to Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...
's character.
The Seven-Ups
Bill performed yet another memorable chase sequence for the little known 1973 film The Seven-UpsThe Seven-Ups
The Seven-Ups is a 1973 American film released by 20th Century Fox. It stars Roy Scheider as a renegade policeman who is the leader of The Seven-Ups, a police team who uses dirty, unorthodox tactics to snare their quarry on charges leading to prison sentences of seven years or more upon...
(in which again Hickman worked with Philip D'Antoni, who had also produced Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
and The French Connection
The French Connection (film)
This article is about the 1971 film. For the British fashion label, see French Connection .The French Connection is a 1971 American crime film directed by William Friedkin. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the non-fiction book by Robin Moore...
) 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 (à 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 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 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
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
, 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 HindenburgThe Hindenburg (film)
The Hindenburg is a 1975 American film based on the disaster of the German airship Hindenburg. The film stars George C. Scott. It was produced and directed by Robert Wise, and was written by Nelson Gidding, Richard Levinson and William Link based on the book of the same name by Michael M. Mooney .A.A...
and Capricorn One
Capricorn One
Capricorn One is a 1977 science fiction thriller movie about a Mars landing hoax. It was written and directed by Peter Hyams and produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment. It stars James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O. J...
notably. He staged the motorcycle chase in Electra Glide In Blue
Electra Glide in Blue
Electra Glide in Blue is a 1973 film starring Robert Blake as a motorcycle cop in Arizona and Billy Green Bush as his partner. The name stems from the Harley-Davidson Electra Glide motorcycle issued to traffic cops....
, starring Robert Blake and also appeared as a driver in the 1969 Disney film The Love Bug
The Love Bug
The Love Bug is the first in a series of comedy films made by Walt Disney Productions that starred an anthropomorphic pearl-white, fabric-sunroofed 1963 Volkswagen racing Beetle named Herbie...
and as the military driver for George C. Scott
George C. Scott
George Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, and as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr...
in the Academy award-winning movie Patton
Patton (film)
Patton is a 1970 American biographical war film about U.S. General George S. Patton during World War II. It stars George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Michael Bates, and Karl Michael Vogler. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner from a script by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H...
. He had many bit parts in classic television series of the 50s and 60s, such as The Man from UNCLE.