Jeannie Epper, 83, veteran stuntwoman in TV shows, movies

Jeannie Epper, the grand dame of Hollywood stuntwomen who brawled, crashed, plummeted and was set ablaze during a career covering more than 150 films and television series, including leaping off buildings as “Wonder Woman” and being swept away in a mudslide in the adventure film “Romancing the Stone,” died May 5. She was 83.

The death, at her home in Simi Valley, Calif., was announced by her family, an extended clan of stunt doubles and risk-taking performers whom director Steven Spielberg once called “the Flying Wallendas of film.” No specific cause was mentioned.

Epper’s work had been seen by hundreds of millions of people since the 1950s, but few outside the entertainment industry were aware of her name or influence.

When Linda Evans’s character Krystle Carrington had catfights with Joan Collins’s Alexis on “Dynasty” in the 1980s, that was Epper standing in for Evans. In “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” (1972), Epper and her sisters, Margo and Stephanie, played hookers who roughed up Paul Newman.

Epper was Shirley MacLaine’s character in 1983’s “Terms of Endearment” when Jack Nicholson’s stunt double was flung from a Corvette. (Epper said that was among her favorite scenes.)

In “Wonder Woman,” Epper was the main stuntwoman to make the leaps, wage the fights and ride the horses for star Lynda Carter in the 19751979 series. Deep in a Mexican rainforest, that was Epper playing Kathleen Turner’s character getting swallowed by a river of mud and swinging on a vine across a 350-foot gorge in 1984’s “Romancing the Stone.” (Being in the jungle was actually more unnerving for Epper, who hated spiders or snakes.)

For more than two generations — as film and TV became more action driven, and often more violent — Epper helped lead the growing contingent of stuntwomen by taking on more challenging scenes and sharing her tricks on how to throw a punch or smash through a prop window.