Bill Hickman
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William "Bill" Hickman (25 January 1921 – 24 February 1986). Stunt driver/actor from the 1950s through to the late 1970s. Played a major role in terms of development and execution in three of the greatest movie car chase sequences of all time.
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[edit] Early History 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. 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.
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."
[edit] Stuntman Work in Bullitt
Although he had many small acting (mainly driving) parts throughout the 50’s and 60’s, it was the landmark car chase along side Steve McQueen in the 1968 film Bullitt which he is usually remembered, although McQueen claims to of done all his driving for his role in the film, it was his good friend and stunt driver Bud Ekins who did most of the technical and high speed driving on Bullitt, as well as the famous scene from The Great Escape were McQueen’s character jumps the fence on his motorcycle. Ekins can also be seen in Bullitt sliding the motorcycle in the wake of the mustang. Bill however was to do all his own driving, portraying one of two hit men, he drove his 440 Charger through some of the best car chase locations imaginable, the streets of San Francisco. The chase climax’s with Hickman's Charger careering off into a gas station and erupting in a massive fireball. Comments and film of Bill talking about his work are few and far between, although in the featurette Bullitt: Steve McQueen’s Commitment To Reality he can be seen discussing the chase with McQueen.
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, this as you can imagine culminated in a few written off cars.
[edit] The French Connection
Another one of the most memorable moments in Bill's career came only a couple of years after Bullitt 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 Bay Ridge, 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 women 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 women 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’s 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 small role in the film as federal agent Mulderig, who played an antagonist of sorts to Gene Hackman's character.
[edit] 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. The chase itself lends heavily to the Bullitt chase, with the two cars bouncing down the gradients of uptown New York (a 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. 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, parallel to the action car, added to which an almost complete lack of dialogue. 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 so 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.
[edit] Later Work
Bill continued to do stunt work in films as the 1970's winded down, The Hindenburg and Capricorn One notably. (He 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.)
[edit] 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.
