Jeannie Epper accepts the Taurus World Stunt Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
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M. Phillips/WireImage/Getty
Jeannie Epper accepts the Taurus World Stunt Awards Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
M. Phillips/WireImage/Getty
In the 1970s, audiences watched as Wonder Woman, Bionic Woman, or one of Charlie’s Angels outsmarted villains, broke through windows, and jumped over obstacles. real Watch Jenny Amber dressed as a superhero. The pioneering Hollywood stuntman’s career lasted more than 70 years and featured in more than 150 films and television shows. Epper died of natural causes at his home in Simi Valley, Calif., on Sunday. She is 83 years old.
“As stuntmen, we are all descendants of the bloodline of stuntmen like Jeanne,” said Katie Rowe, president of the Stuntman Film Association, which Epper co-founded in 1967. Put on wigs and dresses, but of course… they don’t move like women, so they decide to join in on the whole thing.
Amber began her career at the age of nine in the 1951 film elopement. After her parents sent her to finishing school in Switzerland, she returned to Hollywood to play some roles in John Ford films Cheyenne Autumn and tv shows big valley. But in the late 1970s, she saw more opportunities and women were being given more action-oriented roles.She was a stand-in for Lindsay Wagner on the TV show bionic womanand Kate Jackson in the TV series charlie’s angels.Her breakthrough role was as the lead stuntman for Lynda Carter in the TV show wonder woman.
“Whenever I had a stunt to do, she was always on set with me,” Carter told NPR. “She did all the hard things. She set the standard for everyone else. She was the ultimate professional.”
I have a lot to say about Jenny Apper. Most importantly, I love her. I have always felt that we understand and appreciate each other.
After all, this was the 1970s. We unite the way women must unite in order to thrive in a man’s world through mutual respect, wisdom and… pic.twitter.com/ghxY2JT5UP
— Lynda Carter (@RealLyndaCarter) May 6, 2024
Carter said the production started as a gimmick man as her stand-in. “They put a guy with a hairy chest in the Wonder Woman costume—a guy with a square, pudgy body,” she recalled. “You can’t pull the camera far enough to know that this isn’t a zero-curve female body, just hairy arms and hairy armpits, and it doesn’t work.” Carter said they brought in Jenny Apper, “This is perfect.”
Carter said her stunt doubles were experts in horseback riding, and for other stunts, Epper trained or helped find other stuntmen to perform falls, ride motorcycles, perform martial arts or do whatever the scene required.She said that the stunts at that time were very practical and there were no post-production effects such as CGI or AI.
entertainment weekly He once called Amber “the greatest stuntman of all time.” She comes from a family of stunt performers.In fact, according to hollywood reporterDirector Steven Spielberg called them the “flying Wallendas of cinema,” comparing them to the famous circus family. Her father, John Alper, worked as a stuntman for actors Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and Ronald Regan. Her siblings Tony, Margo, Gary, Andy and Stephanie also performed stunts. Her children and grandchildren continue to follow in her footsteps.
Epper has a long list of works.she fights in soap operas dynasty and rolled down a mudslide for Kathleen Turner Romance with stones.She performed stunt driving for Shirley MacLaine in the 1983 Oscar-winning film intimacy terms.She has also done stunts in the following films close contact of the third kind, minority reportand more recently, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and the Amazing Spider-Man.
Amber did get injured a few times on set over the years, as she told Dan Rather on CBS Sunday Morning in 1979.She’s trapped in a burning cabin for TV show Lancershe was hit on the head with a photo frame in the movie crafty brown. But for the most part, Alper avoided any serious injury.
Rowe said Alper was always on set telling others about filmmaking stories and gently offering advice. Even into his later years, Alper continued to work. “She’s like the grandma you see on TV who gets knocked over in the grocery store,” Rowe said. “She’s had a long and eventful career and she’s very strong… She’s just a loser.”
Carter calls Amber the real-life Wonder Woman. “When you do it with grace and honor, like she does,” she said, “that’s the pulse factor of Wonder Woman, reaching out to help others, including others, and changing the world around them in small ways. .
