Gil Perkins(1907-1999)
- Actor
- Stunts
A champion athlete and trackman in his native northern Australia, Gil
Perkins always wanted to get into films; as a teenager he virtually ran
away from home, taking a job as a deck hand on a Norwegian freighter.
He eventually landed in Hollywood in the late '20s, during the era of
part-silent, part-talkie movies, and (because his accent was mistaken
for English) he played young Englishmen in some of his first films. He
soon drifted into stuntwork, regularly doubling cowboy star
William Boyd and putting a red
toupee over his own blond hair to double
'Red
Skelton', among others. Some of his most
notable stunt jobs were in the sci-fi/horror field. He doubled star
Bruce Cabot throughout
King Kong (1933), stood in for
Spencer Tracy as Mr. Hyde in
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
and replaced Bela Lugosi as the Monster in
the climactic battle sequence of
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).
In addition to his feature films, Perkins turned up regularly in
serials and on TV. On many occasions he worked with special effects and
rigging departments, setting up large action scenes. By the 1960s he
was doing more acting than stunts; he "officially" retired in 1972,
although he took a number of subsequent jobs.
