{"id":78277,"date":"2025-08-18T08:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T08:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/78277\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T08:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T08:38:07","slug":"legendary-hollywood-stuntman-and-pink-floyd-fire-figure-ronnie-rondell-jr-dies-aged-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/78277\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Hollywood stuntman and Pink Floyd fire figure Ronnie Rondell Jr. dies aged 88"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Published on
\n 18\/08\/2025 – 8:36 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

Veteran American stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr., who was famously set on fire for the iconic cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ album, has died aged 88.<\/p>\n

Rondell Jr. performed in more than 200 films, inclduing How The West Was Won, Lethal Weapon, Twister and The Matrix Reloaded.<\/p>\n

Arguably one of his most famous stunts \u2013 especially for music fans \u2013 can be seen in the photograph created by legendary artist Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of the English art design group Hipgnosis for Pink Floyd<\/a>\u2019s ninth studio album, 1975\u2019s ‘Wish You Were Here’.<\/p>\n

Rondell Jr. wore a flame-retardant suit and protective gel and was lit on fire on the Warner Bros. Studios\u00a0backlot in California \u2013 then known as The Burbank Studios. The image captures him shaking hands with another suited man \u2013 fellow stuntman Danny Rogers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been doing a lot of fire work in those days, and I had the special suits and all this stuff for fully enveloped fire,\u201d Rondell Jr. said in the documentary\u00a0Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here. \u201cIt was pretty easy to do, not too life-threatening, and paid well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not too life-threatening, but Rondell Jr. did lose an eyebrow and his moustache during the photo shoot…<\/p>\n

Still, the striking cover of ‘Wish You Were Here’\u00a0has had an enduring legacy and remains one of the greatest album covers of all time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Born in Hollywood in 1937, Rondell\u00a0was in the US Navy before he began work as an extra\u00a0on TV. He eventually set up Stunts Unlimited, which represented motorcycle racers, car drivers, horsemen, pilots and fight choreographers.<\/p>\n

His career spanned from 1955 to 2003, with stunt work on films like Kings Of The Sun\u00a0(1963),\u00a0Diamonds Are Forever\u00a0(1971),\u00a0Blazing Saddles\u00a0(1974),\u00a0Commando (1985), They Live\u00a0(1988),\u00a0The Hunt For Red October\u00a0(1990),\u00a0Thelma & Louise\u00a0(1991),\u00a0Last Action Hero\u00a0(1993),\u00a0Speed\u00a0(1994),\u00a0The Crow\u00a0(1994) and Batman & Robin (1997).<\/p>\n

He also worked on classic TV shows like Charlie\u2019s Angels, Baywatch and Baretta.<\/p>\n

He retired in 2000 but returned for one final film, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and was responsible for the best part of the sequel: the\u00a0iconic chase sequence, where his son R.A. Rondell served as supervising stunt coordinator.<\/p>\n

Rondell Jr is survived by his wife Mary Rondell, his son R.A. Rondell and his grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 18\/08\/2025 – 8:36 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Veteran American stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr., who was famously set on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,1554,9713,341,2385,20527,47593],"class_list":{"0":"post-78277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-hollywood","14":"tag-music","15":"tag-obituary","16":"tag-pink-floyd","17":"tag-stunt-performer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}