Stuntmen Lilley and Scott Talk Careers, Lives, Friendship

NEWS FEATURE

Stuntmen Lilley and Scott Talk Careers, Lives, Friendship

By Michael Picarella Signal Staff Writer

The two friends couldn’t really remember how and when they met. Their friendship’s been such a constant in their lives that they said they might as well have always known each other.

Stunt legends Jack Lilley and Walter Scott, both Canyon Country residents, seated at a small table in the shade of fully-grown trees on a recent hot July morning outside Lilley’s house, spoke with The Signal about their careers, their lives and their longtime friendship.

Cowboys, Lilley said, are a tight bunch — like family.

“If they’re friends and you know him,” he added, “you’ll go out of the way to go and visit him.”

Lilley, 88 years old and a second-generation stunt performer, has an impressive list of film and TV credits, including “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962), “Rawhide” (1959-1964), “Blazing Saddles” (1974), “Three Amigos!” (1986), “Army of Darkness” (1992) and “Planet of the Apes” (2001).

He came to Los Angeles from Texas as a kid when his dad got into the business of renting horses to movie studios. By the very nature of his work, particularly his work with horses on westerns, Lilley’s dad soon found himself doing stunts in those movies. Lilley, who helped with the business, would follow in his father’s footsteps.

But keeping horses in L.A. grew difficult as the city developed over the years. The Lilley family had to keep moving north to where there was more open space for the animals.

Eventually, as Lilley got older, married and found his way to the Santa Clarita Valley. In 1958, Lilley and his wife, Irene, moved to the home where they currently reside. And they still have horses and other animals on the property.

Scott, who just turned 82 on July 20, also has an impressive resume. His film and TV credits include “Dirty Harry” (1971), the “Back to the Future” trilogy (1985-1990), “Die Hard with a Vengeance” (1995), “True Blood” (2008), “Django Unchained” (2012) and “Santa Clarita Diet” (2018).

He said he got into stunts in the early 1960s when, coming from Blythe, California, he learned quickly that working as an actor didn’t pay near as much as what stunt performers were making.

“I met all these guys like Jack and other people around,” Scott said, “and I was about to get under contract at Warner Brothers for $125 a week. Well, these (stunt) guys were making $80 a day … And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m a pretty good cowboy.’ You

Jack Lilley (left) and Walter Scott grew up in the stunt business and have remained friends ever since. PHOTOS BY MICHAEL PICARELLA / THE SIGNAL know, every studio had five or six westerns.”

Scott, like Lilley, got into the business by way of westerns because of his cowboy background and abilities.

“I grew up chasing wild horses and wild burros and wild cattle with my dad as a young man,” Scott said. “I learned my craft from my dad at home, like how to swim horses across the Colorado River, and head-and-tail horses together, and rope wild cattle, and bring him out of the brush.”

At the time those skills, Lilley and Scott agreed, were in high demand.

According to numerous sources, the golden age of westerns took place between the 1930s and 1960s. In a June 17, 2014, article by Noah Gittell in The Atlantic about the western genre, studios released up to 140 westerns each year between 1940 and 1960. Scott and Lilley said that while their riding, roping and wrangling abilities got them plenty of work on the number of westerns being produced, it was in doing the bigger stunts that allowed them to profit. In the stunt business, according to Rick Barker, known for his work on movies like “Armageddon” (1998), “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) and “Repo Man” (1984), stunt performers would receive daily or weekly rates for essentially being on set. But they

See STUNTMEN, page 8

Second-generation stuntman Jack Lilly has passed his passion for stunts along to his children who are in the business.