As a Hollywood stuntman Ronnie Rondell spent much of his adult life crashing cars, braving blazes, tumbling from galloping horses and hurtling through the air, but the daredevil performed his most famous stunt for the cover picture of Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here.
The idea was to show two music industry executives shaking hands, and one of them (Rondell) bursting into flames as he was “burnt” by the deal.
Aubrey Powell, the photographer, said Rondell was initially reluctant to be set alight. “It’s dangerous for a man to stand still on fire,” the stuntman told him. “Normally you’re running and the fire’s spreading behind you, or you’re falling and the fire is above you, or you can always make out with camera angles that the stunt person is closer to the fire than they actually are. But to stand still…?”
The Wish You Were Here album cover
He eventually agreed, however, and the scene was shot on a back lot of the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California. Rondell wore a business suit and wig soaked in flame-retardant, and was smeared with a protective gel. Fourteen times he was doused in petrol and set on fire as Powell sought the perfect shot, but the 15th attempt coincided with a gust of wind and the flames suddenly licked around Rondell’s face.
He threw himself to the ground where Powell’s team sprayed him with foam and smothered him in blankets. He lost only an eyebrow and part of his signature moustache, but declared: “That’s it! I’m done!”
“Ronnie was very gracious about it, considering,” said Powell, who had fortunately taken the picture he craved on the previous attempt.
That photograph went on to become one of the great album covers. Years later, Rondell said his only regret was that it completely eclipsed the far more dangerous stunts he had performed during a career that included more than 200 movies and television series.
In the course of that career, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he “broke ribs, arms, wrists and vertebrae, detached his triceps, suffered concussions and had his hips replaced and his spine fused”. But, he said: “You never told anyone you were hurt … because they always had another guy who could fit the clothes.”
Rondell at the annual world stunt awards at Paramount Studios, Los Angeles, in 2004
SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL
Ronald Reid Rondell was born — quite literally — in Hollywood, California, in 1937. His father, Ronald, a native of Naples in Italy, was himself a stuntman and actor. His mother, Ruth, had worked as a secretary in the movie industry.
As a boy, he would visit film sets with his father and worked as an extra in the film Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952). At North Hollywood High School he excelled at high diving and gymnastics. During a spell in the US navy in the late 1950s he served as a scuba diver and mine clearer. Thereafter he worked as an extra in various films before following his father into stunt work and serving as a double for various well-known actors.
His first stunts were for the television series Soldiers of Fortune, which ran from 1955 to 1957. He appeared in Spartacus (1960). He toppled from a flaming 100ft pole in the Mayan adventure film Kings of the Sun (1963). His 5ft 10in, 13st body was filmed flying upside down over a cannon in the civil war movie Shenandoah (1965). For the spy thriller Ice Station Zebra (1968) he drove an exploding car.
Later he worked on numerous television series including Baywatch, Charlie’s Angels and Dynasty, and dozens of movies including Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Blazing Saddles (1974), and Thelma & Louise (1991).
In 1970, as the age of westerns gave way to action movies, he and two other stuntmen, Hal Needham and Glenn Wilder, formed a company called Stunts Unlimited to represent “Hollywood’s top A-list performers … motorcycle racers, car drivers, pilots, aerial specialist and fight choreographers”.
As he aged, Rondell turned to stunt co-ordination, working on films such as The Mighty Ducks (1992), Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Batman & Robin (1997).
Though he officially retired in 2000, he made his last appearance as a stuntman in a spectacular car chase in The Matrix Reloaded three years later. His son, also named Ronald, was the film’s stunt co-ordinator.
Rondell and his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1969, had two sons, Ronald and Reid. Both followed him into the stunt business to create one of its most famous dynasties.
Reid was killed in 1985 when his helicopter crashed into a hillside near Los Angeles while filming a routine scene for a television series entitled Airwolf. He was just 22. Rondell was devastated, but told Don Bellisario, the producer: “It goes with the territory.”
Years later Rondell told the Los Angeles Times: “You just gather it up and deal with the grief and go on with it, and try to make sure it never happens again.
“The thought never crossed my mind to quit this business. It’s the job I chose. It’s the thing I do best.”
In the end, he died not in a blaze or a crash on a film set or a dreadful fall, but in the peace of a Missouri care home.
Ronald Rondell, US stuntman, was born on February 10, 1937. He died on August 12, 2025, aged 88