This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jack Williams" stuntman – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Jack Williams (April 15, 1921 inButte, Montana – April 10, 2007 inSylmar, California) was an Americanstunt performer and actor specialising in horse stunts andWestern films and television shows.

Williams's father, George Williams, was a Montana cowboy. His mother, Paris Williams, was a world-champion trick rider on the rodeo circuit and a movie stuntwoman. The Williams family moved toBurbank, California during Jack's childhood years. He performed his first motion picture stunt on a horse at age 4, being tossed from one rider to another inThe Flaming Forest a 1926 silent film. Attending theUniversity of Southern California, Williams was a polo player and returned to motion picture stuntwork in 1936 forDaniel Boone andThe Charge of the Light Brigade.^[1]

World War II interrupted his Hollywood career when he served as an officer in theUnited States Coast Guard that included service as a navigator on aLanding Ship, Tank in theInvasion of Okinawa.^[2]

Williams returned to Hollywood after the war where for six decades he doubled for or worked with many actors. Among the films he provided stunts for wereThe Last Outpost,Bugles in the Afternoon,Bend of the River,The Far Country,Yellowstone Kelly,Rio Bravo,The Alamo,The Magnificent Seven,Merrill's Marauders,How the West Was Won,Cheyenne Autumn,Major Dundee,Cat Ballou,The Professionals,Alvarez Kelly,The Sons of Katie Elder,The War Wagon and many more up to the 1999 filmWild Wild West. On television Williams worked onThe Roy Rogers Show,Maverick,Rawhide,Bonanza,Daniel Boone,Laredo andThe High Chaparral.^{[citation needed]}

Williams was inspired by his father, George Williams, a Montana cowboy who could train a horse to fall on cue. Jack recalled, "There was probably no feat I could have imagined that was as fascinating as that. So I took the technique and perfected it."^[3]

"He was the top falling-horse stuntman in the business," said stuntman Bob Hoy, who first worked with Williams in 1950. "He had a great horse called Coco, and they were inseparable. The horse had an instinct. A lot of horses will fight you when you get to the spot where they'll make the fall and won't go there. But Coco went there. She was just so great."^{[citation needed]}

Said stuntman Joe Canutt: "You can get great falls a lot of times out of horses, but when you're attacking the Alamo, for example, and you've got bombs and cannons going off ... some of them don't work at all. That mare [Coco] consistently got spectacular falls." But beyond doing the falling-horse stunt, Hoy said, "Jack drove stagecoaches, he wrecked wagons, he could transfer from the horse to the train -- he could do anything pertaining to horse work."^[2] Coco died at age 33 and was buried on Williams' California ranch.^{[citation needed]}

• Jack Williams atIMDb

• 1921 births
• 2007 deaths
• 20th-century American male actors
• American male film actors
• American stunt performers
• Male actors from Butte, Montana
• Male Western (genre) film actors
• United States Coast Guard officers
• United States Coast Guard personnel of World War II

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from December 2017
• All articles needing additional references
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from December 2017