Bill Weston was a gentleman. It’s official. He looked like a gentleman, spoke like a gentleman and treated those around him as he would wish to be treated…..gentlemanly. These qualities were always going to stand for something. He knew this only too well after being born during World War 2 into a world of bleakness and uncertainty. Performing was always something Bill had aspired to. His playful nature and his good looks gave him an edge over the others and first choice for the ladies. Standing 6ft 1in with fair hair made him a very promising leading man type, but he found his love of horses and physical activity would be put to better use. 1966 saw Bill take part in a film called The Fighting Prince of Donegal where it’s Ireland 1587. Hugh O'Donnell inherits the title of The O'Donnell, the prince of Donegal, and tries to unite Ireland to make war on England. The film required horse riding and more importantly falling off. Bill was a riding double for Gordon Jackson. 1966 continued and whilst taking a break to re-evaluate his future Bill was approached for an upcoming movie called The Bells of Hell Go Ting A-Ling-A Ling. Auditions to be held at Borehamwood MGM studios. Auditioning for a stunt double role that day was a young man who was to make a big name for himself in the business. Vic Armstrong. Vic remembers Bill’s arrival. “Bill had long hair and a scruffy beard and looked like the wild man of Borneo, and here he was supposed to be doubling clean-cut young pilots. ‘I’m terribly sorry I’m late,’ he boomed. ‘Just got in from the Bahamas, been crewing a yacht out there.’ The producers stared with incredulity at him. Trying to visualise him with the haystack hair. Bill said. ‘If you give me the job I’m willing to shave it off.’ And he held up a razor in one hand and a shaving stick in the other. ‘We’ll let you know’, said the producers. Outside Bill introduced himself and Vic gave him a lift back to Slough train station. ‘I think you’ve got the job’ he announced, ‘and besides I can’t do it anyway I’ve been offered a thing called 2001: A Space Odyssey’. Bill was right Vic got the job, ten weeks in Switzerland at £75 a week. Unfortunately the production was doomed from day one and it never saw the light of day, but Bill and Vic became firm friends and when Vic’s son Bruce was born Bill became his godfather.
2001: A Space Odyssey was indeed a landmark film. Stanley Kubrick brought Arthur C Clarkes book to life with eye popping special effects and an awesome realism. Not bad for science fiction! Bill was stunt arranger and double. For the shot of Poole floating into the pod's arms during Bowman's rescue attempt, Bill Weston replaced a dummy on the wire to realistically portray the movements of an unconscious human, and was shot in slow motion to enhance the illusion of drifting through space.
Bill was always considerate to those around him. When Vic Armstrong came back from Switzerland he rang Bill to tell him how lucky he was. Bill replied in typical fashion. “I’ve got a contact here which you can have. I can’t do it anyway production on 2001 is running behind. It’s a James Bond film called You Only Live Twice, all you do is go up there and tell them you’re replacing me”. That phone call started Vic on his way to ‘Bondage’ and a long lasting relationship with the super spy.
Bill’s expertise as a horseman was once again used to fine effect in the 1974 film version of the Dick Francis novel Dead Cert. Shot primarily at Fontwell Park racecourse in Sussex many of the camera shots were revolutionary due to a bit of ingenuity on the part of Vic Armstrong and Bill Weston. The director wanted eye level shots from the jockey’s helmets, but the added weight would be very difficult to control whilst riding a horse at 40mph so Vic spoke to Bill about mounting a lightweight camera. Bill remembered such a device from his sky diving days. A film (video was not around then) camera mounted on the side of the head at eye level. To counteract the weight of the camera they took the engine out of it and put it on the opposite side of the helmet, with a flexi-drive over the top. They formed a company called POV Cameras and used it on numerous projects with great success.
Saturday, September 11th 1976 is a day that ‘Python’ Michael Palin will never forget. On the set of Jabberwocky in Pembroke. Bill was stunt arranger and this would be the last day on this location. Michael sets the scene for me. “Stormy wind and rain spread throughout the day, tents blew down, the crowd huddled in any available Norman-arched doorway in the castle walls between shots. With cameras wrapped in polythene bags and in between vicious cold squalls of rain that turned umbrellas inside out, the joust scene gradually progressed. It was 7.30pm when Bill Weston’s last and most spectacular stunt ended the miserable day. He was pulled backwards off his horse by Derek Bottell – the ‘jerk-off’ specialist! We were all so relieved to get into the warm of the pub opposite that night. We bought Bill plenty of drinks that night and rightly so. He was so professional and the perfect choice for the film. We all count ourselves very lucky to have known him”.
A long time ago, well 35yrs to be exact, in a galaxy far far away, or Elstree as we know it to be, a film was being made that would change the way we enjoy science fiction. Star Wars was huge and every British stuntman, who was available, was called up by stunt coordinator Peter Diamond. Bill Weston was one of the few who took part and one of his first roles was as a Stormtrooper in the Blockade Runner battle scenes. Seen here with a few of his colleagues. Tim Condren
Frank Henson
Peter Diamond
Reg Harding
Arthur Howell
Bill Weston
This fantasy tale from 1983 once again brought Bill and Vic Armstrong together. Vic as stunt co-ordinator suggested Bill for a role in the film along with fellow stunt performers Bronco McLoughlin, Andy Bradford and Gerard Naprous.
For five months, a cast and crew of several hundred created the planet of Krull, inhabiting 10 sound stages and exploring 23 different sets. Horses from the Queen's Household Cavalry near Buckingham Palace were borrowed and brought to the studio's back lot; stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong scoured all over the United Kingdom for 16 Clydesdale horses to purchase and then train; a gymnasium, equipped with an Olympic-size trampoline, was set up in a vacant storeroom to facilitate the 40 stuntmen who had been cast.
In order to obtain the close ups of the Clydesdale horses galloping, Vic and his team had given them treadmills to gallop on. Extraordinary stuff.
Let’s not forget many of Bill’s television credits either. The shows he worked on read like a wish list of shows any up and coming actor could only dream of being involved in. Dr Who, Z Cars and Doomwatch, Steptoe & Son and the Benny Hill Show. His comic timing was exceptional and he really ‘got’ how to play a comedic role. Actor and comedian Tim Brooke-Taylor had seen Bill standing in for John Cleese during a rehearsal for At Last the 1948 Show and had kept him in mind for future projects.
As one third of The Goodies, Tim was often responsible for the casting of the other actors. Actors he thought would be best for the show. Bill was one such actor. One particular episode called ‘The Race’ called for the three heroes to enter and win the Tour de France whilst being pitted against the evil villain. A crazed French baron played by Bill. Tim Brooke-Taylor says “Bill was so natural, he knew how to do the pantomime villain and
really loved doing it. We were all about slap-stick and perhaps Bill was another one of those actors born in the wrong time. He could quite easily have been a vaudevillian”. He also worked with Benny Hill. Being approached on several occasions to take on roles, but his favourite was Chief Running Bare; surrounded by a bevy of Benny’s lovelies….who can blame him. We touched on James Bond briefly, but we must also acknowledge Bill’s involvement in this series of films. He wasn’t able to take part in You Only Live Twice due to other work commitments, but tried to make himself available for Bond in the future.
Starting with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the climactic Piz Gloria battle, The Spy Who Loved Me as one of the villains henchman in the battle aboard the super tanker, For Your Eyes Only saw Bill in Greece fighting during the dock sequence, Never Say Never Again gave Bill an opportunity to be killed by Bond, three or four occasions during the final battle sequence, Octopussy saw Bill doubling for Louis Jourdan in his role of the villain Kamal Khan, A View To A Kill saw Bill again doubling the villain, Christopher Walken, on top of the Golden Gate Bridge, The Living Daylights gave Bill his largest Bond role as a butler at the Blaydon Safe House where Bond is attending a high security meeting before being attacked and killed by the henchman Necros and finally The World Is Not Enough had Bill in various locations during the pre-title sequence. The fish market, the restaurant and the formally known Millennium Dome.
Bill Weston also appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark, during the Tunisia filming and was the guy in the bike that went over into the pond during the truck chase. He also recalls that the compliment of soldiers getting into the truck at the beginning of the sequence doesn’t match the amount eventually seen clambering on its exterior to get Harrison Ford later in the action sequence!!!
The motorcycle ‘gag’ was an extra stunt written into the script at the last minute. Bill was approached to ride the motorcycle and suggested the sidecar combination to stunt coordinator Glenn Randall. In the film Indiana Jones swerves into the path of the motorbike and sidecar as it tries to pass the truck, causing the crash, but in fact Bill drove it straight into the water. The front wheel would drop down into the water causing the back end and side car to flip over. Takes only seconds on film and yet it took 4 days to film.
This 1993 Jim Sheridan film was another Bill Weston master class in action. Doubling for Park Royal Prison was Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin and this was to be the location for a very extreme piece of stunt work. The story calls for a hated prison guard to be set alight by an inmate. As fire stunts go it would prove to be a big one. Stuntman Gary Powell doubles the actor being set on fire. Daniel Day-Lewis recalls what went on.
“Bill was the calming influence, throughout the shoot. We were out throwing bottles and bricks at the RUC and Bill was there making sure we all knew what we were doing and more importantly making sure we were all safe. During the preparation for the fire stunt Gary was listening intently to what Bill had to say to him. He had a few dry runs, rehearsing his movements and preparing for the stunt. I had to stay and watch. I always get very excited when a stunt is about to be filmed and if I’m on set at the time I have to stay. It was incredible to watch and always makes me very proud knowing I was there and watched Bill and his team at work”.
Now then Croydon Power station doesn’t seem like a very exciting location for a film and yet in 1985 Terry Gilliam brought it to life in the movie Brazil. Bill was stunt arranger and had the task of teaching Robert De Niro to abseil. All in a day’s work. De Niro had never abseiled before but this wasn’t a problem for Bill as Michael Palin recalls. “Bill had arranged a team of stuntmen to take De Niro under their wings and show him the ropes…so to speak. Inside the cooling tower looked like the villains lair in a Bond movie and De Niro is a big Bond fan which gave him a real thrill. We lit the set by having this gigantic crane outside the tower—because those cooling towers are open at the top—and a big light hanging up there. We used that to rig the stunt. At one point we were talking about doing that as an effect. But Bill convinced Terry [Gilliam] that they could actually do it. The guys got on there and just rappelled down. With CG and everything, people now would do it with computers. But there’s something about that space and the reality of it—because it’s all in one shot coming down—that’s just real”. Terry Gilliam recalls the excellent stunt work on Brazil. “What was extraordinary when they came down, they hit those little spokes, eight inches across at the most, with these silly masks on and ran across those with no safety. There was no safety at all involved in this. You couldn’t get away with that now, but the stuntmen were determined to show they could do it. I was terrified as it was happening because all it would take was one misstep; they were trying to see through the eye holes of masks and they’re firing guns at the same time. We did it in one take. I couldn’t believe what we were getting, because I didn’t expect as much”.
Tip Tipping Terry Forrestal
Nick Hobbs
Wayne Michaels
“I don’t find these shots difficult at all. People go on too much about action being difficult. It isn’t. If you’ve got a good effects team and a good stunt team, that’s the work. So you have a guy flying through the air; the way it was done was on a little trampoline. He jumped off a box, hit that, flew through the air and everybody got the timing right so the explosion went off as he went through the air. It’s very crude; we weren’t using wires or that stuff at all. It was just what you can do on the floor fairly quickly”.
The harrowing 25-minute dramatization of World War II’s D-Day invasion that opens Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is one of the most realistic battle scenes ever depicted on film. Shot over four weeks on a $12 million budget, the sequence used more than 750 extras and a cast led by Tom Hanks to recreate the Allies’ initial massacre and ultimate victory at Omaha Beach in Northern France. The remarkably graphic and haunting set piece helped Spielberg win the DGA Award and Oscar for best director in 1999. Because of restrictions and new construction at the actual historic site, the invasion was staged at Curracloe Strand on the east coast of Ireland. Striving to recreate the jarring, blurred look of 1940s photographs and newsreels, Spielberg and his long time cinematographer Janusz Kaminski shot most of the picture using handheld cameras and came up with various tricks to give the scene a low-tech, documentary feel.
Bill was part of the stunt team who created the hell of war. Simon Crane as stunt coordinator positioned stuntmen with the actors giving them protection at all times from possible danger. Bill and fellow stuntman Paul Heasman were given the job of looking after the main actors during the opening sequence. Bill remembered his experience as ‘awe inspiring’. He’s right, an incredible opening to one of the most powerful depictions of war ever captured on film.
And finally. It seemed more than appropriate to approach someone who has worked very closely with Bill on many occasions throughout his career. The relationship between Bill Weston and Sir Michael Caine started in 1975 whilst filming The Eagle Has Landed. Bill has doubled for Michael on numerous occasions and Michael wanted to pay his own tribute.
“It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Bill Weston. A very fine stuntman and fight arranger and someone who I had known on and off for over thirty years. We first met in the village of Mapledurham in East Anglia when we were filming The Eagle Has Landed. He was my double and did some of the stunts in the film. Throughout the years he has entered my life and done the difficult and dangerous stuff for me. Again in St. Lucia on Water he turned up dressed as my character of the Governor. A suitcase under one arm and a packet of cigars in the other. He’d remembered a conversation we had about me quitting smoking cigarettes. This was Bill’s way of assisting me….gently. We met again on six more films over the years Bullseye, Shiner, Batman Begins, Children of Men, Flawless and Harry Brown. He wasn’t only my double, but on occasions my stand in. We were the same height, weight and even swapped shoes from time to time. A splendid man who shall be missed by all who knew and worked with him. I feel very honoured to have done so and my thoughts and prayers go to Judy and the family.”