Veteran stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr, who was set on fireplace for the entrance cowl of Pink Floyd’s Want You Have been Right here album, has died, his household has mentioned.
Rondell Jr, who carried out in a bunch of Hollywood movies, together with How the West Was Gained, Ice Station Zebra, Tornado and The Matrix Reloaded, was 88.
He died at a care house in Osage Seashore, Missouri, earlier this week, his household mentioned in an announcement posted on the Hedges-Scott-Millard funeral properties web site.
Rondell Jr was pictured as a businessman on fireplace on the duvet of the British rock band’s multi-million-selling 1975 album.
His moustache was singed off in the course of the shoot on the Warner Bros studio lot in Burbank, California, in response to The Hollywood Reporter.
Rondell Jr additionally racked up quite a few TV credit and was recognized for taking up daring stunts involving diving, gymnastics and hang-gliding expertise.
One in all his best-known stunts was leaping from a pole that was on fireplace because it toppled over within the 1963 journey movie Kings of the Solar.
Two years later, he might be seen in midair flying the other way up above a cannon within the 1965 western Shenandoah.
Amongst his different film credit are the James Bond journey, Diamonds Are Without end (1971), Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles (1974), Deadly Weapon (1987), Thelma & Louise (1991), Velocity (1994) and Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
He later got here out of retirement to participate in a spectacular automotive chase in The Matrix Reloaded (2003), on which his son R A Rondell was the supervising stunt coordinator.
Rondell got here from a household steeped within the films, along with his father, Ronald R Rondell, an additional who graduated to working as an assistant director on movies like Across the World in 80 Days and numerous TV reveals.
One in all his sons, R A Rondell, is a stunt performer and coordinator, whereas one other son, Reid Rondell, 22, died in 1985 in a helicopter crash in California whereas performing a stunt on the TV collection Airwolf.
Born in Hollywood in 1937, Rondell excelled in gymnastics and diving in school earlier than getting into the US Navy, the place he specialised in scuba diving and mine drive demolition.
He started as an additional earlier than graduating to TV stunt work, finally establishing Stunts Limitless, which represented prime motorbike racers, automotive drivers, horsemen, pilots, aerial specialists and combat choreographers.
He’s survived by his spouse of 56 years, Mary Rondell, his son, R A Rondell, in addition to grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
