Stuntman to the Stars

Stuntman Bill Catching Took Punches for Hollywood's Cowboy Heroes

WHEN BILL CATCHING, a former Hollywood stuntman who now breeds horses on a 3-acre farm south of Yuma, found out he'd be receiving the 1994 Golden Boot Award, he knew exactly who he'd ask to present it to him his good friend Roy Rogers. “I called him up and said, 'Roy, they're gonna give me the boot.” Outside his pale-yellow home a double-wide modular surrounded by citrus groves and alfalfa fields Catching stands beside the dozen or so corrals where he keeps his prize paints and quarter horses. He welcomes his visitor with a tip of the hat before discussing his longtime relationship with the King of the Cowboys.

Though 84 and seriously ill at the time, Rogers, who has since died, agreed to honor his fellow duck hunter and former stunt double from television's “The Roy Rogers Show” because, after all, the slim, 6-foot-tall Catching had nearly become a relative. Now 75 and single, Catching says he'd been asked more than 20 times by Rogers and Dale Evans' adopted daughter, Dodie, to marry her.

“But I had to decline,” he says, slowly and deliberately, as if reading a script. “She was only 4 years old.” Catching the man who at age 16 hitchhiked from a dude ranch in Bandera, Texas, to Hollywood to be in pictures says his good looks and ability to ride horses enabled him to get work, usually without auditioning. But when he did audition, he concedes, he “failed every time.” Performing for more than 40 years with actors John Wayne, Michael Landon, Jimmy Stewart, Chuck Connors, Robert Stack and Lee Majors, Catching appeared on many classic Western television shows, including “Bonanza,” “Gunsmoke” and “Death Valley Days.” “Once I worked on five television shows in one day, and people started calling me 'TV Bill.' That was a freak thing. I traveled around a lot, though, working three or four series a day,” he boasts.

One of his former producers, Andrew J. Fenady, creator of the television series “The Rebel” and “Branded,” nominated Catching for the Golden Boot Award, the Western film industry's Oscar equivalent presented annually by the Motion Picture & Television Fund.

The custom-made blue jean tuxedo and $500 white felt cowboy hat a replica of Rogers' Catching wore to accept his award serve now as the costume he wears when he rides with the sheriff's posse in the annual Yuma County Rodeo Parade. For this, he rides Sky Ball Paint, a 10-year-old stud named after the last song Rogers sang in public.

Inside the home he calls a museum, barroom brawls, horse drags, airplane crashes, helicopter drops and a New York taxicab chase from his days on “McCloud,” Catching says some of his work was photographed for a feature in Life magazine. Photos are grouped according to celebrity or movie/TV project. The wall he designates just for Roy Rogers includes a picture inscribed “To Bill Next time you need a double, call me.” Catching says the words humorously refer to a guest appearance Rogers made for him when he stunt-directed “The Fall Guy” series.

This horse breeder and farmer began his Hollywood career raking manure, but a photo of a young and fit-looking Catching atop Gene Autry's horse, Champion, sparks a sweeter memory.

“I was about 20 years old then,” he says. “That photo was taken in Tucson. My job [as a wrangler] then was to take care of the stars' horses.” Wrangling eventually led to stunts when his big break came on the set of The Cisco Kid in 1949.

Leo Carrillo, who played Cisco's sidekick, Pancho, asked Catching to be his double.

“I had to wear a body pad because Leo had a bigger build, but he liked how I rode a horse,” remembers Catching Though he's still getting residuals from the movie Blazing Saddles and a few of the other 1,500 films and TV series episodes he appeared in, Catching's 42-year acting career ended in 1987 after he coordinated stunts in Brazil for the comedy Moon Over Parador, starring Richard Dreyfuss.

“I was ready to leave by then,” he explains. “But I've taken a few short-term jobs since, at the request of some old friends.

“I've been all over the world, except for Africa, but now, I've almost become a hermit; I don't want to leave home,” he says, gesturing toward Lady Bug. “All that matters to me now is my family and my critters.” AH Catching bends down to quiet Lady Bug, his Lhasa apso, and then gives the grand tour. He recounts stories from nearly each of the many autographed black and white photographs and original movie posters dating back to the 1950s that line his walls. Pictured with stars in