R.I.P. Burt

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One of my favorite actors.

His best friend, Hal Needham did a lot of his stunt work.

Funny thing Burt always wanted to do his own stunts, and Hal wanted to be the famous actor.

Godspeed Burt........

 
Yes RIP, great actor, also seemed like a genuinely nice guy as well. I loved those Bandit movies when they were out. The original was great, and I still can't turn it off if it's on a tv channel somewhere. The sequel was also pretty funny, but as with most sequels it is never as good as the original. Never saw #3 and possibly #4 if they went that far. I had a '68 GTO in 1980, and I was headed in the Trans Am direction anyway, and those movies put me over the top. I had a '79 Trans Am with Pontiac 400 / 4 speed in 1983 which I drove like the Bandit for a few years. Did not want to make this reply about myself, but that guy sure did sell a lot of cars indirectly for Pontiac!

 
Burt was fired from Gunsmoke and told he couldn't act,, Clint Eastwood was fired at the same time and told he had a skinny neck. Apparently Burt responded to Clint's question of what do we do now? with I'm going to take acting lessons.

 
He will be missed but remembered well.

I too got the Trans Am bug because of those movies! Almost tried to trade in the convertible on a new WS6 Trans Am in about 1978.

Luckily for me and my coveted ownership of the conv, it didn't happen.

I did later get used 1975 Trans Am which I drove to the University of Oklahoma my freshman year. Later I gave it to my little sister and then we sold it to one of my best friends who later bought a pristine 1971 455-HO Trans Am.

And now another friend has recently restored a 1978 Trans Am that is ULTRA nice and very tastefully modded. Looks 100% stock but now produces about 450hp with tons of torque. -And it has operating factory air!

Ray

 
For years Burt had a summer home here in the Hendersonville N.C. area. He would frequent restaurant that my niece worked at.

I never got influenced by the firebird not a great car in my site. I did do lots of rafting in that time and when Deliverance came out we took my big 18.5' raft down the Chatooga river, is that spelled right, it was filmed on. We had a blast. Another raft was with us normal size did a flip off one of the falls. Sometimes on that river people would get hung up in the hydraulic at the bottom of a falls and never come up. They would toss stick of dynamite in to disrupt the flow and wash out the body. It did have some pretty tough drops for sure. My huge raft never flipped in like 10 years of rafting it was soo heavy at nearly 300 lbs. but would easily hold 12 people.

That movie gave all of the people in the mountains a bad rap, lol. Remember that was Georgia not N.C. lol.

I saw on Fast & Loud they did a replay of their building of the copy of the firebird. Guy they got the car from said he paid $5,000 for it was pretty good shape. What I laugh at is that they blew the engine twice before they did it right. How do you do that?? Had to put their corny monkey decal on instead of Screaming Chicken.

 
Yes RIP, great actor, also seemed like a genuinely nice guy as well.  I loved those Bandit movies when they were out.  The original was great, and I still can't turn it off if it's on a tv channel somewhere.  The sequel was also pretty funny, but as with most sequels it is never as good as the original.  Never saw #3 and possibly #4 if they went that far.  I had a '68 GTO in 1980, and I was headed in the Trans Am direction anyway, and those movies put me over the top.  I had a '79 Trans Am with Pontiac 400 / 4 speed in 1983 which I drove like the Bandit for a few years.  Did not want to make this reply about myself, but that guy sure did sell a lot of cars indirectly for Pontiac!
I read an article that said Trans Am sales went up 70% after the movie came out. It was the second highest grossing movie that year behind a little less known show called "Star Wars"

 
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