Ronnie Rondell Jr., a veteran Hollywood stuntman finest recognized for being set on fireplace for the duvet of Pink Floyd’s Want You Have been Right here album, has died. He was 88.
Rondell Jr. handed away on Tuesday (Aug. 12) at a senior residing facility in Osage Seashore, Mo., his household introduced, in response to The Hollywood Reporter. A explanation for loss of life was not given.
All through his decades-long profession, Rondell Jr. appeared in quite a few movies, together with How the West Was Received (1962), Deadly Weapon (1987) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003). To music followers, nevertheless, he’s most famously remembered as the person engulfed in flames on the duvet of Pink Floyd’s 1975 album, Want You Have been Right here.
The hanging picture was shot on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif., and incorporates a half-burning Rondell Jr. shaking palms with fellow stuntman Danny Rogers, each wearing enterprise fits.
“I’d been doing loads of fireplace work in these days, and I had the particular fits and all these items for totally enveloped fireplace,” Rondell Jr. recalled within the documentary Pink Floyd: The Story of Want You Have been Right here (through Rolling Stone). “It was fairly straightforward to do, not too life-threatening, and paid properly.”
The long-lasting picture, created by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of the English artwork design group Hipgnosis, took round 15 makes an attempt to shoot resulting from wind and different components — and even resulted in Rondell Jr. having a part of his eyebrow and mustache burned off.
“We repeated the method 14 instances, took the shot, after which on the fifteenth a gust of wind blew up and wrapped the hearth round his face and burnt him,” Powell advised The Guardian in 2020. “He threw himself to the bottom and his entire group piled on blankets to place him out.”
He added, “I knew I had bought a particular image. It took a very long time to steer Ronnie to face precisely as I wished however ultimately he was very courageous and it was an ideal composition.”
Rondell Jr.’s in depth listing of movie credit contains Kings of the Solar (1963), Shenandoah (1965), Grand Prix (1966), Diamonds Are Ceaselessly (1971), Blazing Saddles (1974), To Stay and Die in L.A. (1985), They Stay (1988), The Hunt for Crimson October (1990), Thelma & Louise (1991), Final Motion Hero (1993), Velocity (1994) and The Crow (1994).
He additionally labored as a stunt coordinator on a number of Aaron Spelling-produced tv collection, together with The Rookies, S.W.A.T., Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, Dynasty, Vegas, Hart to Hart and T.J. Hooker, in response to THR.
Rondell Jr. retired in 2000 however returned to carry out in a chase scene for The Matrix Reloaded (2003), the place his son R.A. Rondell was the supervising stunt coordinator.
