Bob Hoy

 

Robert Hoy – Actor/Stuntman/Director

Robert Hoy appeared as Joe on The High Chaparral  TV series. He has doubled for Charles Bronson, Tony Curtis, Robert Forster, Ross Martin, Tyrone Power, David Janssen, Telly Savalas, Charles McGraw, Jay Silverheels and Abby Lane. His acting roles in many films include: Bite the Bullet, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Lone Ranger, Gambler II, Nevada Smith, Bronco Billy, The Enforcer, The Great Race, and TV shows such as Wanted Dead or Alive, Walker Texas Ranger, JAG, Dallas (recurring role), The Wild Wild West, Magnum P.I. (five episodes), The Young Riders, and Zorro. He was the 2nd Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator in Spain on the TV series Zorro and on the pilot of The Three Musketeers.

The films in which lead actors and others were doubled for stunts are too numerous to mention but include the following: Operation Petticoat, The Defiant Ones, Spartacus, Tobruk, They Call Me Bruce, Saskatchewan, River of No Return, To Hell and Back, Drumbeat, Wings of the Hawk, and Revenge of the Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Bob is also a founding member of The Stuntmens Association (lifetime membership), a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, Directors Guild of America, AFTRA, and the Screen Actors Guild.

 

Taking the Falls


By Jack Lewis
Leatherneck Magazine of the Marines
July, 2002

At one time 65 percent of the Hollywood stuntmen came from the ranks of the Marine Veterans!

A Marine who served in WWII, Bob Hoy is still active as a stunt coordinator and second-unit director. He had just turned 18 when he enlisted in late 1944. He was at Camp Pendleton, Calif., awaiting assignment to a unit for the planned invasion of Japan, when the war ended. He had enlisted "for the duration plus six months" and soon found himself in the Far East, involved in transporting Japanese prisoners of war back to their home areas in Okinawa and Japan proper.

A native of New York, where he enlisted, Hoy had worked part-time on a dude ranch in the state's Catskill Mountains from the time he was 7 until he enlisted. Discharged in San Diego in November 1946, he took a job as a cowboy on a Nevada ranch. His first stunt work was for a film titled "Ambush" made in 1949. He was called upon to jump horses over high fences and to do saddle falls.

After that, his training became an on-the-job matter, but the novice stuntman was lucky. The late Dave Sharpe, considered by some to be the best in the business over the years, took Hoy under his wing. The veteran helped him to learn the ins and outs of not getting killed on the job.

"All stunts have an element of danger," Hoy said, "but horses have minds of their own, and in the two or three seconds of doing a stunt, things can go wrong."

In spite of this, he has specialized in horse work, although he has also been called upon to double in fight scenes, do car work and handle high falls. Former Marines for whom he has doubled include the late actors Tyrone Power and Lee Marvin.

In a film made in 1958, "The Defiant Ones," Hoy doubled for Tony Curtis, while Ivan Dixon did the same for actor Sidney Poitier. For the sequence, the two were chained together, trying to escape from the law in the dangerous rapids of California's Kern River.

"The current was moving along at about 6 knots," Hoy recalled. "There were many outcroppings and rocks, some of them below the water. There also were old fence posts, downed trees, and whirlpools. We were just passengers; there was no element of control. All we could do was try to stay alive, but it all looked great on film." He considers that the most dangerous stunt he has done in his decades of film work.

With credits as a second-unit director, Bob Hoy joined the Directors Guild of American in 1990 and directed a number of "Zorro" television episodes in Spain. He has also moved into acting in his later years and has had running parts on a number of series, including "Walker: Texas Ranger." He also combined acting with stunts on such Marine-oriented television series as "JAG" and "Pensacola: Wings of Gold."

With stunt credits on more than 30 television series and twice that many features, there is no doubt that Hoy has earned his life membership in the Stuntmen's Association.

Looking back over the years, Hoy considers Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., to be much more demanding than most of the movie stunts he has performed.

"It was a time of transformation form boy to man," he said. "It instilled in us a feeling of self-confidence that has been valuable throughout later life."

Discharged after WW II, Robert F. Hoy shipped over in the Marine Corps Reserve. When the Korean hostilities broke out in 1950, he volunteered for active duty, but a bad injury to his right leg caused by a stunt gone wrong precluded further service   

"That hurt more than the actual injury," he recalled these many years later. "My best memories of those days are of the comradeship of Marines then and now, the respect and pride on our Corps and having been a Marine!"

Reprinted with generous permission of the author and Leatherneck Magazine of the Marines.

 

Abilene Reporter News
One Burleson meets actor who portrayed hero ancestor

By Ken Ellsworth
October 21, 2006

Don Burleson, an Abilene businessman, finally met the man he's wanted to meet since 1986, the actor who played the part of Texas Revolution hero Edward Burleson in the 1986 television movie ''Gone for Texas.''

Don Burleson is Edward Burleson's cousin five times removed. Edward Burleson was the first person to be honored with a burial in what was to become the Texas State Cemetery. The man who played Col. Burleson in the movie is Robert Hoy, a movie actor and stuntman since 1949. Hoy was in town for the weekend to support the Dean Smith Celebrity Rodeo at the Taylor County Fairgrounds. Hoy and Smith, a famed stuntman in western movies, participated in dozens of movies together.

Don Burleson met Hoy on Friday following a stuntman forum held at the Expo Center.

''It was a pleasure,'' Burleson said of meeting Hoy, who still looks like he can ride and act. ''I had been wanting to shake his hand and talk with him for a long time.''

Hoy said it was his pleasure, too, to meet Burleson and Burleson's granddaughter, Samantha Burleson, 6. Samantha seemed a little overwhelmed by the crowd of actors and stunt performers, all of whom sported the usual western wear of Stetsons and boots. Some of those included holsters and pistols with their outfits.

Hoy's own movie career began in 1949 with the movie ''Ambushed'' and his last movie credit is listed as a television film named ''Detective'' made in 2005. During that span, Hoy appeared in 136 movies, according to http://www.imdb.com, an Internet movie database.

According the Handbook of Texas, Edward Burleson (1798-1851), originally from North Carolina, came to Texas in 1830, applied for land and was elected lieutenant colonel of the Austin Municipality militia in 1832. He was a lieutenant colonel in Gen. Stephen F. Austin's volunteer army and later became its general. Burleson was a colonel under Sam Houston at the 1836 battle of San Jacinto, which won Texas' freedom from Mexico.

He was also an American Indian fighter and in 1837 became brigadier general of the militia established by the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. He was elected a senator to the Third Texas Congress, and in 1844 ran for president of the Republic, but lost to Anson Jones, again according to the Handbook of Texas.

Copyright 2006, Abilene Reporter News. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.reporternews.com/

 

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