O’Neil’s career as a daredevil included crashing and flipping cars and surviving immolation. As a teenager, Kitty became a competitive 10-meter By 1970, O'Neil had taken up racing on water and land, participating in the O'Neil's runs reportedly used 60% of the available thrust, and O'Neil estimated that she could have exceeded 700 miles per hour (1,100 km/h) with full power.Restrained by her contract, O'Neil struggled with sponsors at the time. “It’s a …
She retired in 1982 with several speed records on the books.
O’Neil moved on, seeking the thrills and danger of extreme speed in other fast vehicles and the feel of the G-forces against her 98-pound body.“It’s a beautiful feeling,” she told The Daily Press of Newport News, Va., in 1978, the year Mattel started manufacturing In 1979 she was the subject of a made-for-television movie, In 1979, while on a break from working on “The Blues Brothers,” Ms. O’Neil visited the Holy Trinity School for the Deaf.
Kitty O’Neil was hired to perform a very difficult stunt for regular stunt women, Jeannie Epper, Lynda Carter’s usual stunt double, in the filming of a 1979 episode of Wonder Woman.
This particular stunt allowed her to set a women’s high-fall record of 127 feet at the 12-story Valley Hilton in Sherman Oaks, California. Her speed peaked briefly at 618 miles per hour, and with a second explosive run measured over one kilometer, she attained an average speed of 512.7 m.p.h., shattering the land-speed record for women by about 200 m.p.h.For Ms. O’Neil, her record — which still stands — was the highlight of a career in daredevilry.
But business intervened: Toy companies that sponsored Mr. Needham — and were planning to make an action figure of him — sued for an injunction to ensure that only he race for the record, taking Ms. O’Neil out of the Motivator.“It really hurts,” she told United Press International after being told of the dispute. Shipping and handling. O'Neil's career as a stuntwoman and race driver led to her depiction in a television movie and as an action figure. In 1978 Mattel created a Kitty O’Neil action figure and in 1979 a television film was made about her life called Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story. I had a good feeling.”She was further soured by a comment attributed to a spokesman for the sponsors — that it would be “unbecoming and degrading for a woman to set a land speed record.” The spokesman later denied having made the remark.Mr. But I said someday I’m going to be famous in sports, to show them I can do anything.”Kitty O’Neil, Stuntwoman and Speed Racer, Is Dead at 72Kitty O’Neil leaping from a hotel balcony in a stunt for the “Wonder Woman” television series. But I’ve been in a car with her many times, and she scared the heck out of me. Later, she told reporters that she had tried to deploy a parachute, then thought, “Oh, Christ, it’s going to crash.”Kitty Linn O’Neil was born on March 24, 1946, in Corpus Christi, Tex. when it flipped, flying 200 yards in the air and landing on its nose. Ms. O’Neil moved on, seeking the thrills and danger of extreme speed in other fast vehicles and the feel of the G-forces against her 98-pound body. O’Neil died on Friday at 72 in Eureka, S.D., where she had lived since 1993. “I wanted to do it again. Frederick recognized that he had been caught in the middle of a gender fight.“When they saw the female getting all the publicity, they got real uptight,” he told The Los Angeles Times soon after the dispute began.Ms. Stockard Channing stared as O’Neil and, of course, O’Neil did her own stunts. And, working as a stuntwoman, she crashed cars and survived immolation.In one stunt, as a double for Lindsay Wagner, she flipped a dune buggy on the television series “The Bionic Woman”; in another, she leapt 127 feet from a hotel balcony onto an inflated airbag as Lynda Carter’s stunt double on “Wonder Woman.”Ms.