Mickey Gilbert, the fearless stunt performer who jumped off a cliff for Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and doubled for Gene Wilder in films including Blazing Saddles, Silver Streak and The Frisco Kid, has died. He was 87.
Gilbert died Monday of natural causes at his home in Camarillo, California, his oldest son, Tim Gilbert, also a stunt performer, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Early in his career, Gilbert was a horse wrangler in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) and a bank robber in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). Years later, he took the lumps for Lee Majors’ Colt Seavers on the 1981-86 ABC action show The Fall Guy.
Though they weren’t friends at the time, Gilbert and Redford were in the same class at Van Nuys High School, graduating in 1954. They got together on George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) when Redford...
Gilbert died Monday of natural causes at his home in Camarillo, California, his oldest son, Tim Gilbert, also a stunt performer, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Early in his career, Gilbert was a horse wrangler in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959) and a bank robber in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). Years later, he took the lumps for Lee Majors’ Colt Seavers on the 1981-86 ABC action show The Fall Guy.
Though they weren’t friends at the time, Gilbert and Redford were in the same class at Van Nuys High School, graduating in 1954. They got together on George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) when Redford...
- 2/6/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Among the true legends of Hollywood’s stunt profession, Mickey Gilbert has always performed a notch above the rest. The stunt double for Robert Redford from 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” through 2018’s “The Old Man & the Gun,” Gilbert has more than 100 film and TV credits as a stunt coordinator and a second-unit director — all of which sprang from Western stunt work dating back more than half a century.
Born April 17, 1936, in Hollywood to Genevieve and Frank Gilbert, he learned to rope and ride amid the alfalfa fields of Van Nuys. Mentored by his father and an old cowboy named Buff Brady from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Gilbert quickly mastered all things equestrian. “Training in gymnastics with my dad when I was a kid gave me a vertical leap from the saddle that made the horse-to-horse transfer a sure thing,” he says.
Excelling at local...
Born April 17, 1936, in Hollywood to Genevieve and Frank Gilbert, he learned to rope and ride amid the alfalfa fields of Van Nuys. Mentored by his father and an old cowboy named Buff Brady from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Gilbert quickly mastered all things equestrian. “Training in gymnastics with my dad when I was a kid gave me a vertical leap from the saddle that made the horse-to-horse transfer a sure thing,” he says.
Excelling at local...
- 8/29/2019
- by James C. Udel
- Variety Film + TV
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