Frank Henson
Stunt supremo who masterminded spectacular action sequences from The Sweeney to Star Wars
FRANK HENSON, who has died aged 83, was a stunt performer and coordinator on both big and small screens, appearing in everything from the James Bond, Indiana Jones and Star Wars films to the gritty 1970s television crime drama The Sweeney.
The series depicted Scotland Yard’s elite Flying Squad with a high degree of realism, and made stars of John Thaw as DI Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as his sidekick, D S George Carter, a tough duo who were not averse to bending the law themselves to secure their quarry. Henson, as the vehicle stunt coordinator for the show, masterminded the many car chases, which were remembered for their screeching of tyres – and for typically ending with the words: “You’re nicked!”
Henson was known as “Frank the Crash” on account of the number of cars he smashed up deliberately in the cause of producing spectacular action sequences. In one variation on the traditional formula, the vehicles being pursued down a street of terraced houses were in reverse.
Shooting The Sweeney (1975-78, and two spin-off films) mostly on location gave a sense of realism to the violent storylines. In addition to devising car chases, crashes, spins and flips, Henson doubled for Thaw in the driver’s seat of his Ford Granada, usually in pursuit of villains in Jaguar S-types.
Much of the action took place on the streets of west London, close to the Hammersmith office of the programme’s production company, Euston Films, an offshoot of ITV’S Thames Television. The area also provided Henson and the production team with wasteland and the Imperial gas works site in Fulham, both suitable for fast-paced action.
His experience of racing sports cars had brought him his first job as a stunt artist. In the 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale, dressed in a wig and women’s clothes, he drove an E-type
Jaguar chasing David Niven as 007 in a Bentley.
Moving to the “official” Bond film franchise, to play one of the Japanese ninjas sliding down ropes into Blofeld’s volcano fortress in You Only
Live Twice (1967), gave Henson the chance to widen his stunt work by using skills gained as a paratrooper in the Army.
He continued in Bond pictures with Never Say
Never Again (1983), as an Arab villain chasing Sean Connery on horseback and doubling for Barbara Carrera’s car-driving assassin; Octopussy (1983), as a clown in a circus where Roger Moore tries to defuse a nuclear bomb; A
View to a Kill (1985), as a mineworker swept away by a flood; The Living Daylights (1987), as a pedestrian running from a speeding Land Rover on a mountain road in Timothy Dalton’s debut as 007; and The World Is Not Enough (1999), knocked over by Pierce Brosnan barging past him.
Henson followed his small role as a Stormtrooper in the original 1977 Star Wars film by playing a Stormtrooper biker scout in the last of the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi. His best scene was hurtling through a forest on a “speeder” bike, tussling with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and being thrown into a tree.
In 1984 he again performed alongside Harrison Ford – Han Solo from Star Wars – in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, doubling for Amrish Puri as the villainous Mola Ram. His memorable climactic scene featured him dangling with Indiana (Ford’s double, Vic Armstrong) from a broken rope bridge over a crocodileinfested river.
Frank Cyril Henson was born in a poverty-stricken area of Brighton on May 3 1935 to Gladys Smith. “Sadly, my father never stayed around and I never met him,” Henson recalled in his 2018 autobiography, The Luck of Losing the Toss. His mother later married and had six more children.
On leaving school at the age of 15, he went through various jobs before doing National Service (1953-55) as a paratrooper with the 16th Independent Parachute Brigade in Suez.
On demob, he moved to London, washed dishes, trained as a hairdresser and worked in a salon at Butlin’s in Filey, on the Yorkshire coast. Returning to London in 1961, he took jobs on the doors at Soho nightclubs and found work as a film extra. Appearing as a radar operator in the Second World War drama The Guns of Navarone (1961) was his introduction to the movies.
After four years as an extra – during which he raced his Austin-healey Sprite at Brands Hatch and other circuits – Henson joined an agency recruiting former services personnel for stunt work.
He brought his skills to films such as Robbery (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968), and drove cars as doubles for Tom Courtenay in A Dandy in Aspic (1968); Peter Schmidt in Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969); his hero John Wayne, in a canary-yellow Ford Capri on a half-lowered Tower Bridge, in Brannigan (1975); and Brian Hall, Bob Hoskins’s chauffeur, who is blown up in The Long Good Friday (1980).
Henson’s work in television included doubling for Martin Shaw in The Professionals and turning over a fire engine in London’s Burning.
When his son, Franklin, became a stunt arranger, Henson worked with him on films such as Basic Instinct 2 and Sherlock Holmes.
Throughout his stunt work, Henson enjoyed a parallel career as a property developer.
He married Marion Cliff in 1962. She and Franklin survive him.
Frank Henson, born May 2 1935, died April 25 2019