H. B. Halicki

H.B. Halicki
H.B. Halicki in Gone in 60 Seconds
Born	Henry Blight Halicki (1940-10-18)October 18, 1940 Dunkirk, New York, United States
Died	August 20, 1989(1989-08-20) (aged 48) Tonawanda, Buffalo, New York, United States
Other names	Hank Halicki The Car Crash King The Junkman Toby Halicki Tony Halicki
Years active	1973 - 1989
Spouse	Denice Halicki (1989-1989)
Website	http://www.gonein60seconds.com

H.B. Halicki (October 18, 1940 – August 20, 1989) (born Henry Blight Halicki) was an American stunt driver, actor, and filmmaker. He was also known as Toby to his friends and family, and to his fans as 'The Car Crash King'.

Biography

Halicki was born in a Polish-American family in Dunkirk, New York, in 1940 and was one of thirteen children. All thirteen children were given nicknames, and his was Toby. The Halicki family was in the towing business, and Toby started to develop his fascination with cars while working in the family towing business. He started driving at a young age and developed a wide knowledge of automobiles by the age of ten. When he was a teenager, after the loss of two of his brothers, Halicki decided to move to California and live with one of his uncles.

Career

Halicki began working at a local gas station in Gardena, California. He started collecting cars at the age of 16, eventually ranging his collection from 1920s classics to lowriders and Ferraris.

By 17, Halicki owned and operated his own auto body shop. At 17 and still in High School, he signed a contract with an insurance company to detail and do minor repairs on 2,000 new cars at $25.00 a piece. With business partner Ron Light, the following year they bought a tire store. Aged 21, with business partner J.C. Agajanian Jr they owned and operated an auto salvage company. Halicki also enrolled in real estate classes and began investing in commercial properties, which led to numerous land holdings and a successful junkyard business.

Gone in 60 Seconds

Further information: Gone in 60 Seconds (1974 film)

For his venture into film, Halicki decided to make the film that became Gone in 60 Seconds in 1974. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film; and with his business sense, he trademarked the terms "Gone In 60 Seconds" and "Eleanor."

There was no official script for the movie, apart from several pages outlining main dialog sequences. Halicki supplied most of the cars, and used repeated footage of the same vehicles and shots of public incidents to increase the footage. The scene in which a train derailment is observed was not part of the original shooting script, but it is in fact a real train that derailed and when the director heard about this he wanted to incorporate it into the film.

According to people on the set, after the mishap when a driver missed a mark and caused "Eleanor" to hit a real light post at 100 mph, the first thing that Halicki said when he regained consciousness was "Did we get coverage?" To achieve the effect of cars sliding into each other when hit by the patrol car at Moran Cadillac, the filmmakers put oil under the tires of the first few cars to help them slide. When it came time to do the stunt, it worked too well and many of the agency's own Cadillacs that were for sale were badly damaged, resulting in Halicki having to purchase all of them. Halicki compacted 10 vertebrae performing the film’s 128-foot-long (39 m) jump finale, that he walked with a limp afterwards.

Much of the action and dialog was improvised, which caused many problems for the editor, Warner E. Leighton, who never knew what footage was being dumped on him or where in the movie it belonged. In the DVD audio commentary, he described the script for the construction site portion of the main pursuit as a piece of cardboard with a circle on it. Halicki pointed at it and said, "That's the dust bowl. We went around it twice. There's your script."

H.B. Halicki Junkyard and Mercantile Company

After the movie, Toby started building H.B. Halicki Junkyard and Mercantile Company with western pieces from around the world.

Toby Halicki was classified as the owner of the "World Largest Antique toy and automobile collection" consisting of over 100,000 collectible items. He handpicked every toy, car and piece in the building. Toby's first car was a 1956 Buick Century. He custom-painted it candy-apple red, highlighted by trailing and reversed scallops of yellow and orange, tipped with red. Among his other purchases, he bought a 1953 Buick Skylark. Toby stopped a bidding session at $6,000.00 so his film editor Jerry Viring could buy a 1949 Buick Roadmaster.

The collection was Toby's private oasis, which was away from his house. He was able to drive his cars and motorcycles in and out the hidden garage doors. He prized and loved his collection of toys, cars, guns, motorcycles, antiques.

The main room was wall to wall with memorabilia from Disney, Coca Cola, movie memorabilia, ray guns, Little Big Books, hubcaps, motorcycles, and neon signs. Inside his building (the size of a football field) his collection ranged from vintage automobiles from the 1920s, to custom low-riders, exotic Ferraris, Citroëns, and Stutz. There was also a movie room for both Eleanors which were featured in Gone in 60 Seconds.

His office was a gargantuan garage displaying toy cars, real cars and all sorts of antique bric-a-brac. If you saw "Gone in Sixty Seconds" you'll recall the many pairs of aviator-style sunglasses scattered about the dashboard of the Cadillac at the beginning of the movie. In real life, it was his Rolls Royce which received the "Toby treatment". Perhaps two items vie for the most striking feature of Toby's office: one was the way Toby could drive into the garage office and park the Rolls within spitting distance of his desk; the other was the desk itself, facing two overstuffed chairs with a chintzy fringed lamp in between, standing high on a pedestal, so that guests had to stare upward toward their host, at about a 30 degree angle.

Marriage, Gone In 60 Seconds 2 and Death

Halicki was introduced to Denice Shakarian in 1983, and in 1988 they got engaged. The couple lived in Southern California, and married on May 11, 1989, in Dunkirk, New York.

On August 20, Halicki began to shoot Gone In 60 Seconds 2 in Dunkirk and Buffalo, New York. Preparing for the most dramatic stunt sequence in the film, during which a 160-foot-tall (49 m) water tower would suddenly topple, a cable attached to the tower snapped. The cable sheared off a telephone pole, which fell on and instantly killed him.

Legacy

In light of the Gone in 60 Seconds 2 project, and their recent marriage, there were a number of legal challenges to Halicki estate. After seven trials, in 1994 the court released Halicki's films and the associated copyrights to Denice, but she was forced to sell the car and toy collection to pay the legal fees.

In 1995, Denice agreed to a contract with Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer for the film Gone in 60 Seconds. Filming began in 1999, with Denice as Executive Producer. The movie premiered on June 5, 2000.

The popularity of the second film revived the popularity of the "Eleanor" (now a 1967 Ford Mustang, not a 1973 model as in the original). A number of car shops started to produce "Eleanor" tagged replicas, which Denice again had to resort to legal action to protect the copyright. In 2008 Denice won a case against Carroll Shelby, who had been selling replicas as “continuation models” of his original Shelby cars. The only official licensed "Eleanor" maker was Classic Recreations LLC in Oklahoma, USA.

As of October 2009, however, Classic Recreations has ceased manufacturing Eleanor Mustangs after entering into a licensing arrangement with Carroll Shelby to produce the GT500CR, a new continuation of his original Shelby cars.

H.B. Halicki's movies

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1973	Love Me Deadly	Race Driver	Actor, Associate Producer
1974	Gone in 60 Seconds	Maindrian "Vicinski" Pace	Actor, Producer, Writer, Director, Stunt Driver
1982	The Junkman	Harlan B. Hollis/Maindrian "Vicinski" Pace	Actor, Producer, Writer, Director, Stunt Driver
1982	The Making of the Junkman	Himself/Host	Documentary
1983	Deadline Auto Theft	Maindrian "Vicinski" Pace	Archive Footage
1988	Rock House	Rolls-Royce Driver	Actor
1989	Gone in 60 Seconds 2	Maindrian "Vicinski" Pace	Archive Footage, Unfinished, Accidentally killed during filming
2003	The Life and Times of H.B. 'Toby' Halicki	Himself	Archive Footage, Documentary

External links

• H. B. Halicki at IMDb
• H. B. Halicki At Find A Grave