Just a preface- I would LOVE to hear some Dave Fulton stories about Hal. The guy just seemed to have a love aficionado for cars, and parlayed it into Harry Gant's big break in Nascar back in 1981.

Heaven just gained a guy who could jump out of a plane or onto a stagecoach like nobody's business.

Hal Needham, a former military paratrooper who later became one of Hollywood's top stuntmen and a film director, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 82 after a short bout with cancer, according to Variety .

The Tennessee native was first a stunt double for Richard Boone on the 1950s Western TV show Have Gun, Will Travel , and parlayed that into big-screen work on How the West Was Won , Little Big Man , Blazing Saddles , Chinatown and other films in the 1960s and '70s.

After enduring countless injuries in his career, he broke 56 bones, including his back twice Needham moved into filmmaking. He wrote the screenplay for Smokey and the Bandit, and his friend Burt Reynolds offered him a chance to direct it as a 1977 comedy starring the actor and Sally Field.

Needham directed the 1980 Bandit sequel and the Reynolds movies Hooper (1978), Cannonball Run (1981) and Stroker Ace (1983), plus the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Western vehicle The Villain (1979), Megaforce (1982) and Rad (1986).

The former stuntman penned a 2011 memoir about his time in the movies, Stuntman!: My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life.

In 2012, Needham was honored with a Governors Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and was introduced by Quentin Tarantino. "You know, you're looking at the luckiest man alive," Needham said during his acceptance speech. "And lucky to be alive."

Schwarzenegger paid tribute to him on Twitter Friday: "Hal Needham was a great stunt coordinator, director, and an icon. I'm still grateful he took a chance with me in The Villain . I'll miss him."

Sad to here RIP hal Needham

I have nothing but nice things to say about my very limited time around Hal Needham, and it was very limited. International Speedway Corp. refused to rent a suite at Talladega to U.S. Tobacco because of the NASCAR/ISC/RJR affiliation. We were approached at Wrangler by UST and had Hal and David Jannsen's ( tv's The Fugitive) beautiful widow, who Hal was seeing, as our guests.

That led to our involvement in the Stroker Ace movie. We had our Wrangler show car in that flick, along with some Wrangler employees, including Wrangler president, Bob Odear's son dressed as crew members in the Talladega pit road sequences.

All of the race track V.I.P. sequences in the movie Stroker Ace were shot in our Talladega Wrangler V.I.P. suite and our guests were thrilled to have Burt Reynolds, Loni Anderson, Jim Nabors, Ned Beatty and former football star, Bubba Smith as cordial, down to earth guests during the race.

I've told here before how Bubba Smith "took" my wife's seat at the bar and she asked me to get it back. Bubba was the biggest man I ever was around. My advice was to let him sit wherever he wanted.

They used to have a really nice piano bar in the former Adam's Mark Hotel in Charlotte. Hal was especially fond of hanging out there on a barstool, wearing Wrangler jeans and a chambray work shirt. His shirts and jeans alway had magnificient creases and were so starched they could have stood up by themselves. Hal was always impeccably dressed. He was a good conversationalist at the bar with plenty of good stories. He'd most often be alone in a bar when I'd run into him. Don't know what that says about us, but that's the way it was.

Joyce and I were invited to the world premiere of Stroker Ace in Charlotte at Ovens Auditorium. We drove in from Greensboro and a limo was dispatched to pick us up at the Radisson where we were staying in downtown Charlotte. It was pretty heady stuff and very enjoyable to "rub elbows" - if just for a few minutes.

Our RR member, Will Cronkrite furnished a lot of cars for the movie and spent a lot of time on location for that movie shoot.

I had not heard of Hal's passing until seeing this post. He was always nice when I was in his presence, which was a very limited amount of time. R.I.P. Hal.

We had a female German Shepherd named Smokey and the best looking pup of the litter we named Bandit.

The clip below is from the May 29, 1983 Spartanburg Herald-Journal :

J.C. Hayes posted the photo below last year:

That's RR's Will Cronkrite in the white 7-Eleven driver's uniform. On the other side of Burt Reynolds (who's wearing the blue driver's uniform) is Freddie "Stroker" Webb of Anderson-Webb Trucking in North Carolina, the company that used to furnish the over-the-road tractors for Richard Childress Racing. Wearing the cowboy hat is Hal Needham.

Hal Needham & Dani Crayne, widow of David "The Fugitive" Janssen - from CinemaRX

This interview was done for ESPN Magazine in 2011 after the release of Hal's book:

As I have strolled the beach this summer, I've seen people reading all types of books, from grocery store romance novels to teenage vampire epics to politically slanted Washington tell-alls. But as I settled into my beach chair, these were among the words that appeared in my chosen book's very first page:

"The explosion must have been second to only the A-bomb five black-powder bombs shot the Chevy thirty feet in the air and folded it in half I was going upside and backward 'Holy s---, he's alive!' John Wayne would have to finish the movie without me."

Now that's what I call summer reading.

The book is "Stuntman! My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life." The author is Hal Needham, perhaps the greatest Hollywood stuntman who ever lived, though I'm not sure how he managed the living part. He's won an Emmy and an Oscar, appeared in 4,500 television episodes and 350 feature films. He directed "Smokey & The Bandit," "Stroker Ace" and "The Cannonball Run." He's travelled 739.666 mph in a rocket-powered car, broken 56 bones and his back twice, and was the first human being to test the automobile air bag.

Needham also happened to have a pretty nice NASCAR career as co-owner of a Winston Cup team with buddy Burt Reynolds. From 1981 to '89 Hal and Burt's No. 33 Skoal Bandit car won nine races and 13 poles and barely missed winning the 1984 Cup title. The pilot of that ride was Harry Gant.

I had the chance at Daytona to sit down with Needham and Gant to talk about the book, racing, pushing the envelope of innovation, and women in hotel bars who used drugs and feminine wiles to steal Rolex watches.

Ryan McGee: OK, full disclosure. Harry, I grew up with a signed photo of you hanging on my wall. Hal, my cousin and I used to play with a Hal Needham Stuntman action doll. And I can, without a doubt, sit here and recite every line from both "The Cannonball Run" and "Stroker Ace."

Hal Needham: Hell, son, I like you already. You remember Harry's award-winning line from "Stroker"?

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Valerie Macon/Getty Images Hal Needham has a book to sell, and our man's opinion is that it's worth the price.

RM: "Oh hell, here we go again "

Harry Gant: [Laughs] That's it.

RM: Hal, you were John Wayne's handpicked stuntman. You started Hollywood's most successful stunt organization. You were directing gigantic box office hits. Why become a NASCAR team owner?

HN: I thought it would be fun. And I thought we could make some money. I had just done this big deal to break the land speed record. I got Budweiser and CBS together and did that deal, had pioneered product placement and sponsorship deals in my movies. So I liked my chances of putting together a NASCAR team.

RM: Was it a hard sell? Oh no, here comes this Hollywood big shot

HN: Nah. I'm a poor kid from Arkansas, first and foremost. I came to Charlotte and fit right in. I went to Humpy Wheeler at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and he got me in touch with Travis Carter, who was working for Junior Johnson at the time and agreed to put the shop and the team together for me. I flew the U.S. Tobacco guys into Los Angeles and really blew them away with the Hollywood thing, limos and Burt Reynolds and all of that. I told them Stan Barrett, a great stuntman and the guy who'd driven my rocket car the second time, would drive the cars. They had the Skoal brand and I suggested the Skoal Bandit idea to take advantage of all the momentum we had from the "Smokey & The Bandit" movies. And there you have it.

RM: Harry, were you like, "Who is this movie guy?"

HG: Yeah, pretty much. Travis called and asked me to help out. I met with Hal. They had Stan in the car. But eventually I moved in there. We've had crazy people coming into NASCAR from the outside to start race teams all the time, so I was a little skeptical. But I figured I could go back to my construction job or back to the Busch Series if it didn't work out. But we did pretty good.

HN: We did more than good. We should have won the championship in '84. I can still hear Harry coming over the radio at Riverside [in the season finale] and saying the engine blew. And I still say my voodoo act had nothing to do with that.

RM: Voodoo act?

HN: Yeah, our main competition for the championship that year was Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte. I did a whole press conference in this tent with incense and smoke machines. I put little version of their cars on a table and stuck voodoo pins in them. It was all just to get Skoal some PR. But Earnhardt did blow an engine that weekend.

HG: He took it a lot further than that and NASCAR didn't like it, did they?

HN: Yeah, later that year I hired an actor friend of mine, big black guy, Shakespearean-trained, amazing actor. I had him dress up and follow me around the garage like a voodoo doctor. We walked up to Earnhardt and Labonte's cars and he'd just stand there and stare at them, gave them the crazy eye. A few minutes later I hear over the loud speaker, "Hal Needham, please report to the NASCAR truck!" They said to get him the hell out of there before there was a riot. It was all for PR for Skoal.

RM: But you also got into hot water with NASCAR over some other stuff, too. I remember an issue with telemetry.

HG: Yeah, Hal had run all this telemetry stuff during the land speed record stuff. Like what they run in open-wheel racing. We ran a race at Talladega and that car was so dang wired up

HN: All that data was being fed back to the pits in real time. It blew their damn minds. [NASCAR president] Bill France Jr. had given me permission to run it. But when the race was over and they saw what it could do, he said, "Leave that thing at the shop next week. I don't want to ever see it again." But we still used it when we tested the car. Now everyone does.

RM: Ultimately, do you think that's what you're known for in the Cup garage: innovation? I mean, other than the voodoo act

HN: We were the first modern team to start dressing our crew in matching white uniforms with the sponsor logo all over them, like the driver. And I brought in personal trainers and nutritionists to work with the guys, got them in shape and cut time off the pit stops. That's standard stuff now, but it was way out there back in the 1980s.

HG: You remember the Bandettes, don't you?

RM: I was a 16-year-old boy at the racetrack, what do you think?

HN: [Laughs] Yeah, that's what I thought. We hired cheerleaders to come to the track and I got my Hollywood costume designer to come up with some outfits for them. We also painted up the hauler from top to bottom with that white and green and the Skoal Bandit logos. The back said, "You are following the Skoal Bandit Racing Team" so people on the highway would see it. Richard Petty came up to me and said, "You've got the field lapped with that truck." The next year everyone was doing it.

RM: So the Hal Needham NASCAR legacy is innovation, winning races, and voodoo.

HN: And raising hell on Saturday nights.

HG: That reminds me. You got your watch on? [Laughs]

RM: I wasn't going to bring up the Rolex Queens, but it is in the book after all

HN: Oh hell, OK. We're in Atlanta for the spring race and we stayed over that night to test the car the next day. In the hotel bar I met a lovely young woman and after a few drinks we decided to take it upstairs. Long story short, she hands me a drink and goes into the bathroom to slip into something more comfortable

HG: And she never came back out.

HN: Well, not that I remember. I woke up the next morning with a raging headache and all my rings, my wallet, and my $18,000 Rolex Presidential were gone. Turns out there was this group of women who drugged men they met in hotel bars and relieved them of their valuables. They called them the Rolex Queens.

RM: But you learned your lesson, right?

HG: [Laughs] This guy really did read the book, didn't he, Hal?

HN: So we come back later that year for the second race at Atlanta. Now I'm wearing a Movado, an even nicer watch than the Rolex. [Hollywood producer] Al Ruddy had given it to me. I met another good-looking woman, same hotel bar. This time I'm being more careful, right? We don't take any drinks up to the room. But the next morning, damn if I don't wake up again, no watch, no wallet. I figure she'd drugged my drink downstairs when I was in the bathroom.

HG: From then on, anytime he saw a woman, he'd say, "I like her" or "I'm going to ask her to dance" and

HN: And Harry would always say, "Let me hold your watch."

RM: I thought you were going to say he pulled out his line from "Stroker Ace"

HN: [Laughs hard] Oh hell, here we go again

Ryan McGee, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, is the author of "ESPN Ultimate NASCAR: 100 Defining Moments in Stock Car Racing History." He can be reached at mcgeespn@yahoo.com.

Hal was 2nd Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator for the 1974 Burt Reynolds' movie "The Longest Yard."

Ed Lauter, the actor who played the mean Captain Knauer, Captain of the Guards, in that movie, passed last week.

I am saddened to hear of the passing of Hal Needham.

As Dave mentioned we did supply some of the 'rolling stock' for the movie 'Stroker Ace'. We provided nine of the cars, two 18-wheelers and all the pit equipment. Our 'deal' was that they would provide me with a contract guaranteeing the signer 30 seconds of exposure in the movie. I could sell the contract for whatever I could get for it. As the word got out, I was not able to acquire cars fast enough to fulfill the requests. The 'new' T-Bird in the film was actually two new T-Birds that we built from (2) prototype T-Birds and the 5-Star Whisky car wasactually two of our own race cars. They needed two of each of these cars as the filming was done in 4-lap segments, repeated three times. One pass was with the camera in the 'bad guy's' car, one with the camera in Berts car and the third was from the camera truck. They would switch the camera mounts during the current 4-lap filming sequence.

The folks from Ford were really pissed that we had two of there prototype cars and had torn them all to hell. I have writtenthree stories on my website about thisfilming adventure. They can be found at http://www.mantiquesresto.com/aboutus/stories/storyindex2.html . They are titled Two Birds for Bert, Wounded Bird and The Lucky Penny. Please be aware that I amNOT a writer, but am merely trying to put memories together for the potential for a book later in life if all goes well. They are at the bottom of the second section on the summary page. Click the 'Read' button.

Hal was always upbeat and funny as hell. At the end of the Hal Needham movies there are trailers that show some of the funny stuff that occurred during the filming, and I was fortunate to attend the majority of those encounters. Each day after filming, they would send the film to L.A. for developing and then sit down that evening and review the film that was returned from the day before to evaluate their progress and make sure that they were in line with the screenplay 'book' that a lady would keep for their review. These meetings were attended by Hal, Bert, Lonnie, Bubba Smith, Ned Beattyand others as well as the 'B' unit director that was responsible for the upcoming film sequences. I was hired to be responsible for the movement, upkeep and maintenance on all the racing equipment, trucks and pit equipment, so I had to take notes, etc., for the next day's activities, Dave can attest to all the comedians in that group, and it was always so funny with every one of those folks making a joke or a wise crake about something.

Throughout all of this, Hal was the lead comedian, but kept the meetings going in an orderly fashion. He would always see to it that we all ate extremely well. He hired his regular caterers from the west coast to prepare the food locally. The "A" group was fed the catered food and the "B" group ate from local providers. After the first three days we got invited to the "A" group and the weight gain began in earnest. He was known to ask who wanted to go see a current Cup race, and when learning how many of us wanted to go, he would rent an airplane and take us all to the event. He was a class guy! I got every penny they said I would get and treated me and my guys with respect and courtesy the entire time of the filming.

RIP Mr. Needham

I am saddened at Hal's passing and offer my prayers and sympathy to his family and friends. I had several encounters with Hal Needham while he was involved with NASCAR and Harry Gant. It was because of Hal that I got to meet Burt Reynolds. No, he did not introduce me to Loni Anderson. Hal was always soft-spoken and had a ready smile. First time I encountered him, if I had not already known what he looked like, I would have assumed he was any other race fan in the pits.