“Jeannie was bad-ass and a sweetheart,” Ms. Bell stated. “A lady and one of the boys. A cowgirl and a finishing school graduate. A Christian and one of my favorite people to crack filthy jokes with.”
Jean Luann Epper was once born on Jan. 27, 1941, in Glendale, Calif., and grew up in North Hollywood. Her father served within the cavalry in his local Switzerland and moved within the Nineteen Twenties to Hollywood, the place he opened a driving academy and educated actors who have been showing in westerns, and likewise the place he married Frances Robertson. He were given into the stunt industry when he was once turning in a horse to a suite and ended up doing the stunt himself — the scene concerned leaping the animal over a automotive. He taught his 3 women and 3 boys tips on how to trip, tips on how to soar and, maximum notable, tips on how to roll and tips on how to fall.
As a tender teen, Jeannie was once despatched to completing college for a couple of years in Switzerland — she hated it — and upon her return, she married at simply 16, changed into a mom and going to paintings.
Her marriages to Wes Fuller, Richard Spaethe and Lee Sanders resulted in break-up. Along with her daughter, who may be a stuntwoman, Ms. Epper is survived through her husband, Tim Kimack; her son, Richard; 5 grandchildren; and 7 great-grandchildren.
Amongst her many alternative credit, Ms. Epper seemed in 8 motion pictures produced or directed through Steven Spielberg, together with “1941,” the 1979 slapstick comedy that imagines an alternative truth to what took place within the days then Pearl Harbor. Maximum of her crowd was once forged in that movie, too. In Ms. Micheli’s documentary, Mr. Spielberg referred to as the Eppers “the Flying Wallendas of film” and added that during a bar struggle scene in “1941,” “there were Eppers flying all over the place.”
Ms. Epper’s closing position was once no longer a stunt, precisely. In 2019, at 78, she was once forged as a hostage in an episode of the ABC sequence “The Rookie” that concerned being certain, gagged and duct-taped to a chair with a shotgun strapped to her shoulder and pointed at her head.
Debbie Evans, a much-lauded stuntwoman who stated she regarded as Ms. Epper her “stunt mom,” drove her to the all set. “It was a special day,” Ms. Evans recalled. “She was so high and happy.”
