RIP Neil Summers

 

Nicholas Sylvere ‘Neil’ Summers died in Kanab, Utah on September 4^th. He was 81. Neil was born on April 28, 1944, in Bromley, Kent, England. His father Walter Summers was a champion bicycle rider and the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona when Neil was 14. He worked on TV’s ‘Gunsmoke’ from 1971-1974 as an extra and stuntman. I met Neil in the 1990s at Rawhide, Arizona and we became friends. He told me, “I grew up watching all the cowboys on TV. I just wanted to be a cowboy in the movies. I had no interest in staying inside. I started working as an extra and they eased me up.” Neil played Snake River Rufus Krile in the 1972 film “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”. He was spotted by director Sergio Leone who hired him for the role of Squirrel in “My Name is Nobody” (1973). He quickly became friends with actor Terence Hill and appeared in seven of Hill’s films and television series including “Lucky Luke” (1990) as Deputy Virgil and the TV series of the same name, “Troublemakers” (1994) as Dodge and Hill’s most recent TV westerns ‘Doc West’ and ‘Triggerman’ (2008). Neil was noted for writing several books on film westerns, writing a column “The Stuntmen” for Boyd Magers Western Clippings and having one of the largest western film collections of photographs, posters and lobby cards. He was much more than a stuntman and actor he was a devoted fan of the genre.