Jock Mahoney

Jock Mahoney was a man of action. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II as a pilot and flight instructor. At the end of the war, he moved to Los Angeles where he was briefly a horse breeder before becoming a stuntman. While doubling for actors such as Gregory Peck and John Wayne, he quickly gained a reputation as one of the best. He was Errol Flynn's stunt double in 1949's "The Adventures of Don Juan" in the famous scene where Don Juan leaps from a high staircase during a fight sequence. Director Vincent Sherman has said Mahoney was the only stuntman willing to do it. Under his contract with Columbia Pictures, he was regularly put in to perform in comedy shorts, including several starring the Three Stooges, where he would be used to parody the clichéd leading man, and Western pictures where he would sometimes appear as a villain. In 1951, he finally had his big break when Gene Autry cast him to star in the popular television Western series "The Range Rider." From there, Mahoney was cast in multiple leading roles in action pictures and Westerns. In 1973, he suffered a major stroke, which required him to use a wheelchair periodically for the rest of his life. He continued to perform in macho roles, however, even performing one last stunt, falling from a wheelchair, five years later in Burt Reynolds's comedy picture "The End."