By Steve Evans
I love learning new bits of film history. I live for it. Better than birthdays and Christmas. So I was reading about the short career of James Dean, which got me to thinking about the guy’s death 63 years ago, which led to the discovery that on his fatal drive in that Porsche Spyder he was the lead car in a caravan of friends heading to a race track. About two minutes behind him was Dean’s racecar-driving mentor, an occasional actor named Bill Hickman, who arrived at the crash scene in time for Dean to expel his final breath of air in Hickman’s face. By his own account, Hickman was so haunted he didn’t sleep for five days.
I didn't know that story until today, but I instantly recognized the name Hickman. His destiny was to become a legendary movie stunt driver. Steve McQueen chased him all over San Francisco in Bullitt (1968). Hickman did the high-speed driving for Gene Hackman in The French Connection ('71) and outran Roy Scheider in The Seven-Ups ('73), a little-seen thriller with an incredible car chase as its centerpiece. Hickman drove real cars down real roads, barreling along at speeds well in excess of 100 mph. No computer enhancements or image manipulation. One slip of the steering wheel and he coulda ended up like his pal Dean. Some of us like living on the edge. Hickman took it over the edge and came back to show us the real deal.
I love learning new bits of film history. I live for it. Better than birthdays and Christmas. So I was reading about the short career of James Dean, which got me to thinking about the guy’s death 63 years ago, which led to the discovery that on his fatal drive in that Porsche Spyder he was the lead car in a caravan of friends heading to a race track. About two minutes behind him was Dean’s racecar-driving mentor, an occasional actor named Bill Hickman, who arrived at the crash scene in time for Dean to expel his final breath of air in Hickman’s face. By his own account, Hickman was so haunted he didn’t sleep for five days.
I didn't know that story until today, but I instantly recognized the name Hickman. His destiny was to become a legendary movie stunt driver. Steve McQueen chased him all over San Francisco in Bullitt (1968). Hickman did the high-speed driving for Gene Hackman in The French Connection ('71) and outran Roy Scheider in The Seven-Ups ('73), a little-seen thriller with an incredible car chase as its centerpiece. Hickman drove real cars down real roads, barreling along at speeds well in excess of 100 mph. No computer enhancements or image manipulation. One slip of the steering wheel and he coulda ended up like his pal Dean. Some of us like living on the edge. Hickman took it over the edge and came back to show us the real deal.
Hickman died of cancer in 1986. He was 65. French Connection
director William Friedkin called him the greatest driver in the history of
cinema. That’s Hickman in the photo below, at right, with Dean lighting a
cigarette at left. I'm not sure about the guy hunched over the fateful Porsche.
Could be Sal Mineo, Dean's co-star in Rebel Without a Cause. Mineo was murdered
in a botched robbery in 1976, but that's another Hollywood story for another
day.
Cinema Uprising copyright © 2018 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.
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