Jack Lilley, whose showbiz career spanned more than seven decades as an actor, stuntman, animal coordinator and other roles and included Little House on the Prairie, Blazing Saddles, John Ford films and TV Westerns, has died. He was 91. His family posted the news on Instagram but did not provide a date or cause of death.
“The man who started it all. Figuratively and literally,” the social post reads in part. “The card shark, the horse trader, the wrangler, the man with a story for everything, he always knew someone who could help if he couldn’t, known to many as friend, storyteller, joker, and a heck of a horseman.”
Little House star Melissa Gilbert also paid tribute to Lilley on IG, calling him “one of my favorite people on the planet” and adding, “I am so lucky that he was my friend.” See her full post below.
Born on August 15, 1931, in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, Lilley started his career in the late 1940s, following his horse-wrangler father into the entertainment industry. The younger Lilley was a trained horseman and began landing stunt, animal-coordinating and background actor work in such early-TV Westerns as Wagon Train, Death Valley Days and nearly three dozen episodes of Zorro. He also worked on a number of big-screen Westerns of the era.
In a 2017 interview for SCVTV, Lilly said he got his start “in 1947, ’48, they were all scrambling to make little Westerns — something to sell to TV.”
Lilley would go on to work on dozens of shows including Maverick with James Garner, Clint Eastwood’s Rawhide, the record-setting Gunsmoke and four seasons on The High Chaparral as a background actor and stand-in for its star Leif Erickson. He also worked with four-time Oscar-winning director Ford on How the West Was Won (1962) and The Man who Shot Liberty Valence (1962), starring James Stewart and John Wayne. He also was part of Wayne’s final film, The Shootist (1976).
Lilley worked on more than three dozens episodes of Little House on the Prairie during its Emmy-winning 1974-1983 run on NBC. He appeared onscreen, usually uncredited, as a stage or wagon driver, townsman and other bit roles. He also served as a stunt performer and coordinator and stand-in on the beloved series led by Michael Landon and several follow-up TV movies. He later reteamed with Landon on Highway to Heaven.
Lilley also was part of the gang put together by Harvey Korman’s Hedy Lamarr — oops, that’s Hedley — in Mel Brooks’ NSFW Western comedy classic Blazing Saddles. And as a stuntman on the 1974 film, he pulled off one of its wildest gags: When the rowdy “pack of murderers and thieves” first descends on the poor denizens of Rock Ridge, Lilley is riding a horse that appears to slip on a wooden boardwalk and falls into a waterhole.
“It was a freak deal,” Lilley told SCVTV. “They took a firehose and washed the side of that street at Warner Bros. Well, when that water hits that old wood, it goes like soap. It got slick. If you look at it, I come in on that black horse … this horse weighed 1,200 pounds, and he wasn’t a ‘falling’ horse … but he got to scrambling. I can’t look to see if I’m near a glass window or not, so I just snatched him and fell him. I got up, and Mel Brooks went, ‘Holy sh*t — what was that? I ain’t never seen nothing like that in my life!’”
Lilley also talked about doing a “scrapped” scene when Mongo (Alex Karras) rode that bull into the church where the townspeople were gathered and filming the famous scene when Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) happens upon Count Basie and his orchestra in the wilds of what turns out to be Palmdale.
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Lilley continued to work in multiple capacities as a stuntman, stand-in and/or background actor throughout the 1980s and ’90s on such popular fare as Used Cars, Sudden Impact — again with Eastwood — Pink Cadillac, Army of Darkness, Texas Rangers, Three Amigos! and A Walk in the Clouds. His later TV credits include Dallas, Fantasy Island and Bonanza: The Next Generation.
Here is Gilbert’s Instagram post about Lilley:
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