Bobby Bass

Stuntman and actor Bobby Bass was born on August 6, 1936 in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

Bobby not only was a Judo champion with a third degree black belt, but also was a paratrooper, Green Beret, and a Special Forces instructor in the military prior to being introduced to the stunt business by fellow stuntman and actor Gene LeBell in the mid-1960's. Outside of his extensive work as a stuntman, Bass also taught such people as Mel Gibson, Burt Reynolds, Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Danny Glover, Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner how to either fight and/or handle weapons (Bass helped popularize the use of the head butt in barroom fights).

Bass was engaged to stunt woman Heidi Von Beltz in the late 1970's. As stunt coordinator on The Cannonball Run (1981), the original stunt woman scheduled to perform a stunt had an emergency family illness and left the production. Bass called her to the set for a stunt that he described was to be "a piece of cake", and in which she would operate a smoke machine from the passenger seat. Von Beltz did the stunt, because the production was running seriously behind schedule. Her car was struck by a van that made the wrong move, and she was not wearing restraints, because seat belts had been removed from her vehicle prior to the accident. The proper safety parts had not been delivered to the set. Because of the schedule demands, filming resumed with the car not in safe condition. Upon impact, she was flung through the windshield and survived, but was left a quadriplegic. She died in 2015.

In addition, Bobby became a staunch advocate of safer working conditions in the stunt industry after stuntwoman and then girlfriend Heidi Von Beltz was paralyzed from the neck down in the wake of an automobile stunt going disastrously awry during the shooting of The Cannonball Run (1981) as well as the tragic helicopter accident that claimed the lives of Vic Morrow and two child actors that occurred during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).

Legendary stunt woman Julie Ann Johnson was fired by Spelling-Goldberg Productions after complaining about cocaine abuse by Bass and others on the set of Charlie's Angels. She and Jean Coulter were almost killed during one stunt where they were passengers in a vehicle and Bass was the driver. At one point, he sped up where he should have slowed down and both women were injured. Bass later testified in a wrongful termination suit Johnson brought against Spelling-Goldberg in 1987 He swore under oath that he had not used cocaine that day but Johnson won and was awarded $1.1 million.