Jay Milligan, Golden Gun stunt supervisor, dies

The end of the car jump of The Man With the Golden Gun

Jay Milligan, the driving stunt supervisor of The Man With the Golden Gun, died in March, according to a tribute video by the Erie County (New York) Fair.

Mulligan had helped to create a stunt where a car would do a full rotation between two ramps, landing right side up on the other side.

The stunt was adapted in 1974’s Golden Gun in a car supposedly driven by James Bond (Roger Moore) with Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) as his passenger.

According to the documentary Inside The Man With the Golden Gun, the stunt went so smoothly, director Guy Hamilton wanted a second try. The stunt driver, Bumps Willard, understandably refused. Milligan himself did other stunt driving in the film, according to the documentary.

“The movie came out in 1974. I was elated,” Milligan said in a 2015 interview with The Buffalo News. “When does an adopted kid from West Chester, Pennsylvania, ever have the opportunity of being a stunt director and driver of a James Bond car?”

The Erie County Fair produced the tribute video because Milligan had produced demolition derbies at the fair. Here’s the video:

Happy 100th birthday, Richard Shores

Richard Shores (1917-2001)

Today, May 9, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Richard Shores.

Shores isn’t well known among the general public. He was a busy composer for television shows, including The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (he was the primary composer for that show’s final season), The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke  and Perry Mason, among others.

Journalist and movie-television music expert Jon Burlingame described Shores’ work in a 2004 interview after producing an U.N.C.L.E. soundtrack.

“I have become a huge Richard Shores fan as a direct result of this project,” Burlingame said, referring to the U.N.C.L.E. soundtrack. “As for U.N.C.L.E., he was the right man at the right time. He had the right sensibility for fourth-season shows (serious but sometimes jazzy).”

With spy and spy-related shows of the 1960s, Shores had an impact. Besides U.N.C.L.E., he scored 23 episodes of Five-O, from 1969 to 1974, 14 episodes of The Wild Wild West and one episode of It Takes a Thief.

Often, his scores were somber and dramatic. However, he was not a one-trick pony.

He scored an offbeat 1966 episode of Gunsmoke titled Sweet Billy, Singer of Songs. It was a mostly comedic outing of the normally serious show, involving a number of relatives of Festus (Ken Curtis) descending upon Dodge City.

Richard Shores title card for an episode of Hawaii Five-O.

Shores’ music was appropriately light and unlike the composer’s usual fare.

With The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (1966-67), Shores’ music was better than episodes he scored such as The Prisoner of Zalamar Affair and The Montori Device Affair.

For the fourth season of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1967-68), Shores’ music meshed with the more serious direction that producer Anthony Spinner decided to take the series.

The first episode of the season, The Summit-Five Affair, was drastically different than the show’s campy third season offerings. Gerald Fried, who scored more U.N.C.L.E. episodes than any other episodes, apparently was influenced. His single fourth-season offering in The Test Tube Killer Affair, sounds similar to Shores’ style.