The Fall Girl

The oil lamp tipped over, igniting the heroine's cape in a blaze of fire. Could Actress Lisa Blount survive the scene on the set of Universal's new film, 9/30/55? Actually, Blount could not. No fool when it comes to playing with fire, she had gladly turned the role over to Stunt Woman Kitty O'Neil. The nimble O'Neil took the heat, then casually waved Blount back onto the set.

It was all routine for O'Neil, 28, who also blithely falls off buildings, gets roughed up in fight scenes and tumbles from speeding cars on Quincy, Gemini Man and Baretta, among other television shows. Doubling for a villain on the Bionic Woman, she speeds neck and neck with Lindsay Wagner in a dune-buggy chase before losing spectacularly in a sandy somersault. In Airport 77, a recycled crash caper, she torpedoes through the high waters of a flooding aircraft cabin to rescue a small boy.

Delicately pretty, O'Neil has been in the business only a few months, yet already she holds the record for the highest stunt fall by a woman (105 ft.) and is considered among the best of the 40 stunt women in Hollywood. Says Loren Janes, a Hollywood stunt coordinator for 23 years: "She has developed in six months to a point that usually requires two to three years. She is very calm, cool and collected under pressure." Crashing through barriers in more ways than one,

O'Neil and veteran Stunt Woman Janet Brady were elected last month as the first female members of Stunts Unlimited, an organization whose members perform 70% of the stunt work in movies and television.

Speed Freak. At 5 ft. 3 in. and 100 Ibs., O'Neil hardly looks hardy enough to be a fall girl. But lack of size is not the most surprising thing about her: O'Neil has been deaf since infancy. Her mother, a full-blooded Cherokee, taught her to lip read and helped her through public school in Wichita Falls, Texas. Always athletic, O'Neil began studying diving at the age of 15 with Dr. Sammy Lee, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner. Just when her Olympic prospects looked good, she was stricken with spinal meningitis; doctors said she would be paralyzed for life.

But O'Neil overcame that affliction and moved on to her next sports: motorcycle and car racing. A total speed freak, she has raced bikes, sports cars, dragsters and dune buggies. While revving up her motorcycle engine at a rally one day, she met Stunt Man Duffy Hambleton, 39. Marriage followed, and O'Neil became a housewife. But not for long. She soon got bored staying home, and in 1974 O'Neil began a rigorous two-year training program under Hambleton to become a stunt woman.

Says Hambleton of his wife-student: "She is completely fearless." He thinks that O'Neil's deafness may be an asset. As he explains it: "On a crowded movie set, it's very difficult to concentrate, to get your timing down. Kitty is not distracted by the sounds around her." So far, O'Neil has suffered only one injury on a set. In a fight scene on NBC's Quincy, she was thrown to the ground by a stocking-masked villain. Instead of falling on her behind, as planned, she landed on her head. Recalls O'Neil, matter-of-factly: "I saw stars."

O'Neil's work fails to satisfy her appetite for danger. In her spare time these days she pilots a hydrogen peroxide-propelled rocket car across a dried-out lake bed. With the biblical symbol of the cross and fish emblazoned on her white jumpsuit, highly religious O'Neil recently set an unofficial women's record for land speed by hitting 358.1 m.p.h. Her next goal is to top the men's record of 622 m.p.h.--a toughie even for a 100-Ib. superwoman the likes of O'Neil.

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