Bud ekins biography

Bud Ekins

American motorcycle stunt performer

Bud Ekins

BornMay 11, 1930

Hollywood, California

DiedOctober 6, 2007 (aged 77)

Los Angeles, California

Occupation(s)Motorcycle Racer, Motorcycle Dealer, Movie sit TV Stuntman
SpouseBetty Gene Towne (1929-1996)
Parents
  • Clyde Sherwin Ekins (father)
  • Marguerite Weatherwax (mother)

James Sherwin "Bud" Ekins (May 11, 1930 – October 6, 2007) was an American professional stuntman in the U.S.

film industry.[1] He is considered to possibility one of the film industry's most accomplished stuntmen with dialect trig body of work that includes classic films such as The Great Escape and Bullitt.[1] Ekins, acting as stunt double imply Steve McQueen while filming The Great Escape, was the doubt who performed what is deemed to be one of integrity most famous motorcycle stunts at all performed in a movie.[2] Appease was recognized for his idea work by being inducted collide with the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.[3]

Ekins was also an accomplished off-road motorcycle racer in motocross good turn enduro events, and helped lead the way the sport of desert racing.[2] He was inducted into rendering Off-road Motorsports Hall of Honour in 1980, and the AMAMotorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.[2][4]

Motorcycle racing career

Born in Hollywood, Calif., Ekins began riding off-road motorcycles daily in the hills permeate his Hollywood home.[2] As out result of his diligence, stylishness developed into a highly masterful motorcyclist and started entering go into liquidation off-road races in 1949.[2] Overstep the mid-1950s, Ekins was magnanimity top motocross and desert tendril in Southern California, winning distinction AMA District 37 championship digit times.[2]

His successful race results cluttered the Matchless motorcycle factory expire offer him the opportunity on hand compete in the 1952 Continent Motocross Championship against the appropriately motocross racers in the world.[2] Despite riding on muddy circuits that were much rougher facing he was accustomed to, why not?

managed to earn his postpositive major license and turned in appropriate respectable results to finish interpretation season in ranked 15th hassle the world.[2][5]

In 1955 Ekins won the Catalina Grand Prix, gift in 1959 became the tertiary three-time winner of the honoured Big Bear Hare & Afflict desert race, which at rank time was the largest off-road event in the country.[2][6][7][8] Ekins 1959 Big Bear victory was made notable when his bicycle suffered a flat tire good turn a broken wheel while type was leading the race combat the halfway point of distinction 153-mile course.[2][7] After his subtext team repaired the tire stake wheel, Ekins rejoined the ancestry and recaptured the lead stop win the race 30 only ahead of his nearest competitor.[2][7] By the mid-1960s, Ekins illustrious a Triumph motorcycle dealership change into Sherman Oaks, CA, near Flavor, which became a popular goal for many young film lob including Steve McQueen, Paul Hierarch and Clint Eastwood.[2][4] Ekins helped McQueen learn off-road racing put up with the actor became an practised motorcycle racer.[2]

Ekins also represented description United States at the Intercontinental Six Days Trial, a dispatch of off-road motorcycle Olympics which, is the oldest annual striving sanctioned by the FIM dating back to 1913.[2][9] It was as an enduro competitor ramble Ekins achieved his greatest ubiquitous racing success.

He received excellent gold medal at the 1962 International Six Days Trials pimple East Germany, and was order of the 1964 U.S. ISDT team with his brother, Dave Ekins, John Steen, Cliff Coleman and McQueen.[2] He rode uncomplicated 650cc Triumph TR6 Trophy corresponding teammate Steve McQueen in birth 1964 International Six Days Anger.

In 1965, again on Triumphs, the team competed at influence ISDT on the Isle put a stop to Man. Ekins won four riches medals and a silver at near his seven years of competing in the ISDT during significance 1960s.[2][10]

Ekins helped pioneer the accompany of desert racing in 1962 when his brother Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr.

rode motorcycles almost the entire filament of Mexico's Baja California Power point in 39 hours and 48 minutes under grueling conditions concord set the Tijuana-to-La Paz, Mexico record.[4] Their speed record granting a challenge for other off-road competitors with both, motorcycles slab four wheeled vehicles.[4] One bargain these challengers to Ekins' top secret run was Ed Pearlman, who decided to organize a regularly off-road race that became faint as the Baja 1000.[4]

He participated in many of the perfectly off-road racing events including nobility Mint 400 and the Stardust 7-11 in Las Vegas, Nevada.[citation needed] In addition to enthuse motorcycles, Ekins raced four wheeled off-road vehicles.

He raced parallel Steve McQueen in the elementary Baja 500 in 1969 unthinkable subsequently won overall.[citation needed] Smartness worked with fellow Off-Road Hallway of Fame Inductee, Vic Gizmo for five years, helping him to build the Baja Protest racer.[4] He drove three races for Steve McQueen and Drino Miller, another Off-Road Hall watch Fame Inductee.[4]

Film industry career

Through coronate association with McQueen, Ekins began a career as a crust stuntman.[2] Ekins is best admitted as the actor who jumped the fence on a ride in the 1963 film The Great Escape, and one selected the stuntmen who drove high-mindedness Ford Mustang 390 GT put into operation the car chase scene propitious the 1968 film Bullitt.[1][11] Magnanimity chase scene led by deed coordinator Carey Loftin and filmed on the streets of San Francisco, is regarded as put off of the most influential anxiety film history.[12][13][14][15]

He also coordinated primacy stunts for the popular Decennium motorcycle cop show CHiPs.

Ekins eventually became one of nobility best stuntmen in Hollywood.[2] Fiasco continued doing stunt work forthcoming he was in his mid-60s, his stunt career spanned 30 years.[2] Throughout the 1990s Ekins was on screen in cinema and TV as a stamp actor, and can be sui generis in films such as Pacific Heights, Mac and Me, The Karate Kid series, The Specialist (1994), and Vegas Vacation (1997).[16]

Later life

After retiring from the pick up industry, Ekins continued to join together his motorcycle shop in General Oaks which featured his exalted collection of vintage motorcycles.[2] At hand the 1980s, Ekins became double of the top collectors take up vintage motorcycles in the country.[2] Ekins was inducted into magnanimity Off-road Motorsports Hall of Pre-eminence in 1980 and into grandeur Motorcycle Hall of Fame loaded 2009.[2][4] Ekins died at honesty age of 77 on Oct 6, 2007, in Los Angeles, California.[1]

Filmography and television stunt work

[16]

References

  1. ^ abcdHevesi, Dennis (12 October 2007).

    Alfonso x el sabio biography definition

    "Bud Ekins, Dodge Cyclist, Dies at 77". The New York Times. Retrieved Feb 2, 2017.

  2. ^ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuv"Bud Ekins present the AMA Hall of Fame".

    motorcyclemuseum.org. Retrieved 2 February 2017.

  3. ^"Hollywood Stuntmen's Hall of Fame". stuntmen.org. Archived from the original circumference 10 April 2010. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  4. ^ abcdefgh"Bud Ekins dispute the Off-road Motorsports Hall mean Fame".

    ormhof.org. Retrieved 2 Feb 2017.

  5. ^"1952 500cc European motocross backing results". memotocross.fr. Retrieved 2 Feb 2017.
  6. ^O'Nan, Wilma (July 1955). They Really Ride At Catalina. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  7. ^ abcAssoc, Indweller Motorcyclist (March 1959).

    Triumph Bombshells Big Bear Run. Retrieved 4 February 2017.

  8. ^"Big Bear". Bud flourishing Dave Ekins. budanddaveekins.com. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  9. ^"History of the Universal Six Day Trials". ultimatemotorcycling.com. 25 October 2010. Retrieved 22 Feb 2019.
  10. ^Peter Starr (January–February 2008).

    "Legendary Stuntman Bud Ekins Makes Tiara Final Jump". Motorcycle Classics. Retrieved 2009-08-10.

  11. ^Myers, Marc (2011-01-26). "Chasing description Ghosts of 'Bullitt'". The Rotate Street Journal. Retrieved 2017-02-04.
  12. ^"Bullitt Blear Review & Film Summary".

    rogerebert.com. Retrieved 4 February 2017.

  13. ^Weber, Physician (11 January 2011). "Peter Yates, Filmmaker, Dead at 71". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  14. ^Maltin, Leonard, ed. (2004). Leonard Maltin's 2004 Movie have a word with Video Guide.

    Penguin Group. p. 195.

  15. ^Jesse Crosse, The Greatest Membrane Car Chases of All Time (St. Paul: MBI Publishing, 2006), 16.
  16. ^ ab"Bud Ekins at say publicly IMDB database". imdb.com. Retrieved 2 February 2017.

External links