Jeannie Epper had not less than 100 display roles, possibly even 150 — nobody is kind of certain. However as a result of she was a stunt double, galloping on horseback, crashing vehicles and kicking down doorways for the celebrities of movies and tv exhibits, hers was not a family identify.
In her heyday, nonetheless, Ms. Epper was ubiquitous. She hurtled by way of the air most weeks as Lynda Carter’s stunt double on the hit tv collection “Marvel Girl” and mimed Ms. Carter’s leggy lope. She tumbled by way of a scrum of mud and rocks as Kathleen Turner’s double within the 1984 comedy-adventure movie “Romancing the Stone,” which additionally starred Michael Douglas. She threw punches for Linda Evans in one among her many ballyhooed cat fights with Joan Collins on the frothy long-running Eighties nighttime cleaning soap opera “Dynasty.”
And, in what she usually mentioned was her favourite stunt — or gag, to make use of the business time period — Ms. Epper skidded a Corvette right into a 180-degree flip as Shirley MacLaine’s character in “Phrases of Endearment” (1983), neatly hurling Jack Nicholson’s double into the Gulf of Mexico.
Ms. Epper, whose bruising profession spanned 70 years, died on Sunday at her residence in Simi Valley, Calif. She was 83.
Her daughter, Eurlyne Epper, confirmed the loss of life. She mentioned her mom had been sick for a while and caught an an infection throughout a latest hospital go to.
Ms. Epper was stunt royalty; her father was John Epper, a Swiss-born grasp horseman who doubled in westerns for Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and Ronald Reagan. Like her 5 siblings, Ms. Epper joined the household enterprise.
She was simply 9 when she rode a horse bareback down a cliff in her first stunt. Her first movie credit score, nonetheless, as The Hollywood Reporter found, was “Cheyenne Autumn,” a 1964 western directed by John Ford. And she or he was an everyday on the western collection “The Huge Valley,” which ran on ABC from 1965 to 1969, usually doubling for Barbara Stanwyck.
“Marvel Girl,” which debuted on ABC in 1976, was a watershed second not only for Ms. Epper but additionally for all ladies in her business. Regardless of the work of Ms. Epper and others, stunt doubling had lengthy been principally a person’s recreation, with males dressing as ladies to do their stunts — a apply often known as wigging. The collection was groundbreaking for that includes a feminine motion hero, as was one other ABC collection, “Charlie’s Angels,” that very same yr.
“Actresses didn’t need hairy-legged boys as doubles,” Ms. Epper advised Selection in 2007. “They wished fairly ladies. It slowly began altering the order of issues.”
The rangy, 5-foot-9 Ms. Epper was used to the tough and tumble of the brotherhood that accepted her due to her father, and likewise as a result of she had her personal moxie. She was savvy concerning the sexism of the stunt world, and the film enterprise.
Zoë Bell, a New Zealand-born actor and stuntwoman whom Ms. Epper mentored, described the recommendation Ms. Epper gave her when she was placing collectively her résumé for a job doubling for Uma Thurman in “Kill Invoice: Quantity 1,” Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 martial arts splatterfest. (Ms. Bell, a gifted gymnast, had been Lucy Lawless’s double throughout each season of “Xena: Warrior Princess,” which was shot in New Zealand and ran from 1995 to 2001.)
“She requested me what I weighed,” Ms. Bell recalled by cellphone. “I mentioned ‘145-ish.’ Jeannie, with out lacking a beat, mentioned ‘OK, so put 130. You look 130 and the actresses all lie.’ She went on to speak about recognizing a damaged system and devising new guidelines that one feels good about, so as to have the ability to maintain enjoying the sport.”
Ms. Epper and Ms. Bell have been the joint topics of “Double Dare,” a 2004 documentary directed by Amanda Micheli, which adopted Ms. Epper as she hunted for work in her 60s and Ms. Bell, who was in her early 20s, as her profession was simply taking off.
“Jeannie was up towards the inequity of girls not getting promoted,” Ms. Micheli mentioned. “The working life span of a stunt performer is transient, like knowledgeable athlete’s. They’re utilizing their our bodies, they’re hitting the bottom every single day.
“The perfect stuntmales go on to turn into stunt coordinators, and even second-unit administrators, which is a robust position on an motion movie,” she continued. “Jeannie’s brother Gary bought these alternatives, whereas she simply stored hitting a wall. As a substitute of attending to name the pictures, she was hustling for small jobs right here and there, and taking hits effectively previous her prime. I noticed the ache that brought about her, each figuratively and actually.”
In Ms. Epper’s youth, there have been the same old mishaps. Whereas leaping a horse off a raft in “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969), she practically drowned when the horse floundered and flipped within the water. She was nearly knocked out by Pam Grier within the 1974 blaxploitation movie “Cunning Brown” when Ms. Grier smashed a portray over her head and sliced open her cranium. She caught hearth when a stunt went south in an episode of the late-Nineteen Sixties tv collection “Lancer.”
The years of stunts principally took their toll in torn ligaments and battered joints. Not that she complained.
“Jeannie was bad-ass and a sweetheart,” Ms. Bell mentioned. “A girl and one of many boys. A cowgirl and a ending college graduate. A Christian and one among my favourite folks to crack filthy jokes with.”
Jean Luann Epper was born on Jan. 27, 1941, in Glendale, Calif., and grew up in North Hollywood. Her father served within the cavalry in his native Switzerland and moved within the Twenties to Hollywood, the place he opened a using academy and educated actors who have been showing in westerns, and likewise the place he married Frances Robertson. He bought into the stunt enterprise when he was delivering a horse to a set and ended up doing the stunt himself — the scene concerned leaping the animal over a automobile. He taught his three ladies and three boys learn how to experience, learn how to leap and, most essential, learn how to roll and learn how to fall.
As a younger teenager, Jeannie was despatched to ending college for a couple of years in Switzerland — she hated it — and when she returned, she married at simply 16, turned a mom and went to work.
Her marriages to Wes Fuller, Richard Spaethe and Lee Sanders led to divorce. Along with her daughter, who can be a stuntwoman, Ms. Epper is survived by her husband, Tim Kimack; her son, Richard; 5 grandchildren; and 7 great-grandchildren.
Amongst her many different credit, Ms. Epper appeared in eight movies produced or directed by Steven Spielberg, together with “1941,” the 1979 slapstick comedy that imagines an alternate actuality to what occurred within the days after Pearl Harbor. Most of her household was forged in that movie, too. In Ms. Micheli’s documentary, Mr. Spielberg known as the Eppers “the Flying Wallendas of movie” and added that in a bar struggle scene in “1941,” “there have been Eppers flying everywhere.”
Ms. Epper’s final position was not a stunt, precisely. In 2019, at 78, she was forged as a hostage in an episode of the ABC collection “The Rookie” that concerned being certain, gagged and duct-taped to a chair with a shotgun strapped to her shoulder and pointed at her head.
Debbie Evans, a much-lauded stuntwoman who mentioned she thought of Ms. Epper her “stunt mother,” drove her to the set. “It was a big day,” Ms. Evans recalled. “She was so excessive and comfortable.”
