World Courant
Kim Kahana, the stunt performer, trainer, coordinator and struggle hero who performed Chongo on the youngsters present Hazard Island and doubled for Charles Bronson in a number of motion movies, has died. He was 94.
Kahana died Monday of pure causes at his house in Groveland, Florida, his spouse, Sandy Kahana, informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Kahana, 5-foot-7 and 150 kilos, taught stunts to many hundreds of scholars for the reason that mid-Nineteen Seventies in six-week programs that occurred in Chatsworth, California, and Central Florida. Many went on to have thriving careers in present enterprise.
He additionally had six completely different black belt levels — he taught martial arts, too — and labored as knowledgeable bodyguard defending Hollywood sorts.
A local of Hawaii, Kahana appeared in his first movie as a biker within the Marlon Brando-starring The Wild One (1953) and was an additional in different motion pictures earlier than he realized that stunt performers received paid greater than he did.
He realized stunts and stunt coordinating from Yakima Canutt, an honorary Oscar recipient who doubled for Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind (1939) and staged the enduring chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959).
On The Banana Splits Journey Hour, a Saturday morning youngsters program that ran on NBC from 1968-70 after which in syndication, Kahana appeared within the present’s live-action serial Hazard Island as Chongo, a local who spoke no English however communicated utilizing animals and hen sounds.
“I received a name for an audition for the half,” he recalled in 2012. “Jumped on the desk, did a again flip and was employed.”
“Uh-oh, Chongo!” was the catchphrase employed to set off every journey on the segments that starred Jan-Michael Vincent and have been directed by Richard Donner.
Kahana’s lithe athleticism and stature meant he may double for Stefanie Powers on The Woman From UNCLE and Sally Subject on The Flying Nun.
His résumé as a stunt performer, coordinator and/or actor included Cool Hand Luke (1967), Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Soylent Inexperienced (1973), Earthquake (1974), The Killer Elite (1975) , Smokey and the Bandit (1977), MacArthur (1977), Good Guys Put on Black (1978), Passenger 57 (1992) and Jeepers Creepers (2001).
“By means of a whole lot of films and tv exhibits, Kahana has been crushed, burned, sliced, dropped, shot at, catapulted, hit by automobiles and exploded, typically merely in phantasm, typically actually,” the Los Angeles Instances wrote in 1987. He is been paid $52,000 to drop by way of a cable from a jet helicopter to a gap within the facet of a 747.”
That stunt was for Airport 1975 (1974).
Kahana was born on Oct. 16, 1929, in Lanai Metropolis, Hawaii. He left college within the third grade, got here to the US mainland as a stowaway and at 13 hitchhiked all the best way to Boston, the place an aunt and uncle lived.
He started working with bandleader Xavier Cugat and as a knife and hearth dancer in a stage present referred to as The Samoan Warriors.
Kahana acquired two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his service in the course of the Korean Battle. He emerged from a mass grave after an enemy firing squad had left him for useless and was blinded in his left eye from an exploding grenade.
In 1955, he was the lone survivor of a aircraft crash in Texas that killed the opposite 32 folks on board. “I walked away with no scratch,” he stated.
When Kahana drove a good friend to an audition on his bike, he was noticed by a casting agent and requested to come back inside, resulting in his gig on The Wild One.
His profession in Hollywood gained steam within the ’60s, working in such movies because the Elvis Presley starrers Enjoyable in Acapulco (1963) and Paradise, Hawaiian Type (1966) and on TV exhibits together with The Time Tunnel, The Excessive Chaparral and Ironside.
When The Brady Bunch went to Hawaii in 1972 in the course of the present’s fourth season, Kahana might be seen doing a hearth dance on an episode that additionally featured Vincent Worth. Later, he discovered common work on Kung Fu and Nickelodeon GUTS.
He stepped in for Bronson on movies together with The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Soiled Dozen (1967), The Mechanic (1972), Loss of life Want (1974), Mr. Majestyk (1974) and Breakout (1975).
Amongst his college students who went on to Hollywood careers have been stunt performers Heidi Schnappauf, Tom Place, Billy D. Lucas (double for Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Joanne Lamstein (double for Barbra Streisand).
Kahana was a longtime member of SAG’s Security Investigating Group, and his unbelievable life story was informed within the 2023 documentary Kim Kahana: The Man Who Modified Hollywood.
He did rigging for a film simply final yr and was nonetheless instructing stunt work in his last days.
Along with his spouse, whom he married in 2005 — they met on Passenger 57 when she was an additional — survivors embrace his kids, Tony, Kim Jr. and Debbie, and his grandchildren, Michael, Lance, Kalana and Josh, an creator. One other son, Rick, died in 2012 of a coronary heart assault at age 51.
All his youngsters adopted dad into the stunt enterprise.
Stuntman, ‘Hazard Island’ Actor Was 94
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