Joe Dunne, stuntman who doubled for Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films – obituary

Joe Dunne, who has died aged 86, was one of the film industry’s most highly regarded stuntmen and stunt co-ordinators during a 50-year career.

Dunne was Peter Sellers’s stunt double in all his outings as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films. As stunt co-ordinator he devised some of the films’ best comic gags, such as Sellers’s hop off the parallel bars and down an open stairwell in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and the golf cart being dumped off a dock in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978).

Joseph Martin Dunne was born in Blackpool on October 27 1935 and brought up in Brixton, south London. His mother had performed in music hall, notably as part of “Madam Clarke’s Twelve Parisian Maids”, as well as supporting the likes of Gracie Fields.

His family was originally from Liverpool, and Dunne was evacuated there during the Second World War. He attended Santley School in Brixton and then Bembridge boarding school on the Isle of Wight. He ran away back to London, however, keen to become a footballer.

He had a trial with Chelsea and was on the books at Leyton Orient, Fulham and Gillingham. He played in goal for Hendon during the 1950s.

Aged 15 he was working on road construction in Brixton when he met Ann Kempster, who was working on her father’s market stall. They spent 60 years together, and were married for 46.

He held down various jobs before entering the film industry, playing an uncredited soldier in The League of Gentlemen (1960) and, the following year, working as a stuntman on The Guns of Navarone.

From then on he was rarely out of work – in all he worked on more than 150 films and television shows – and early in his career he worked with such screen greats as Gary Cooper, Edward G Robinson, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster.

He doubled for both John Lennon and Ringo Starr in Help! (1965), and appeared in the 1960s Bond films From Russia with Love, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.

Before the start of an episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., an announcer told viewers not to be too alarmed by a deadly stair fall – 360 steps – performed effortlessly by Dunne. He was stunt arranger on The Avengers, in 1968 and 1969.

In a publicity campaign for the 1970 film Kelly’s Heroes, Dunne was announced in the press as “Clint Eastwood’s 1,000th Screen Kill”.

His work with Blake Edwards on numerous projects, including six of the Pink Panther films, led to a firm friendship. Edwards would often simply write on the screenplays: “the next sequence will be choreographed by Joe Dunne.”

Such was his ease of movement Dunne sometimes doubled for actresses, including Catherine Schell as the Phantom who steals the pink panther diamond at the start of The Return of the Pink Panther. In 1981 Edwards brought him to Hollywood as second-unit director on S.O.B., starring his wife Julie Andrews, and he bought a house in Los Angeles.

There Dunne loved nothing more than holding court poolside. Asked which actor or actress he found most difficult to work with he answered “Sylvia Sidney!” As stunt co-ordinator on Tim Burton’s sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! (1996), he had found the screen veteran hard going: “I worked with some tough, mean, hard-nuts and then there was Miss Sidney!”

By contrast, on the 1986 mini-series North & South, Book II, Dunne worked with James Stewart. “He’d arrive, on time, no entourage, no fuss, just style... New Hollywood has much to learn”.

Joe Dunne continued to work into the mid-2000s. Dunne’s wife Ann died in 2010, and his survived by their son Matthew, who followed his father into the film industry.

Joe Dunne, born October 27 1935, died January 14 2022