Cowboy Stuntman : From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen

Dean Smith has taken falls from galloping horses, engaged in fistfights with Kirk Douglas and George C. Scott, donned red wig and white tights to double Maureen O’Hara, and taught Goldie Hawn how to talk like a Texan.

He’s dangled from a helicopter over the skyscrapers of Manhattan while clutching a damsel in distress, hung upside down from a fake blimp 200 feet over the Orange Bowl, and replicated one of the most famous scenes in movie history by climbing on a thundering team of horses to stop a runaway stagecoach.

Cowboy Stuntman chronicles the life and achievements of this colorful Texan and Olympic gold medal winner who spent a half century as a Hollywood stuntman and actor, appearing in ten John Wayne movies and doubling for a long list of actors as diverse as Robert Culp, Michael Landon, Steve Martin, Strother Martin, Robert Redford, and Roy Rogers.

Retired stuntman and actor Dean Smith, an Olympic gold medalist at the 1952 Helsinki Games, lives on a ranch in Ivan, Texas, with his wife, Debby. His long list of honors includes membership in the Stuntman’s Hall of Fame, the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

The 2010 recipient of the A.C. Greene Award for lifetime achievement, Mike Cox is the author of twenty-one nonfiction books. An award-winning former journalist and longtime freelance writer, he lives in Fredericksburg, Texas, and is a spokesperson for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.