Bill Hickman was already an established stuntman by the time The Wild One was being filmed and his expertise on motorcycles landed him work on the Stanley Kramer production.

He sustained a couple of significant injuries during this time, including breaking several ribs in a bad trick-fall in the film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965).

Hickman was to do all his own driving; portraying one of two hit men, he drove an all black 1968 Dodge Charger 440 Magnum R/T through the streets of San Francisco, using the hills as jumps.

[1] In a professional driver's touch (before compulsory restraints were introduced in California), Hickman's character buckles his seat belt before flooring it at the beginning of the pursuit by the Highland Green 1968 Ford Mustang 390 GT, driven by Steve McQueen.

Hickman played federal agent Mulderig who is in constant conflict with Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle in the 1971 Best Picture Oscar winner The French Connection.

In the accompanying behind-the-scenes featurette of the 2006 DVD, Hickman can be seen co-ordinating the chase from the street, where it can be seen how dangerous these sequences were: on cue, a stuntman in a parked car opens his door, only to have Hickman's vehicle take it completely off its hinges, where (from the behind-the-scenes footage) we see the door fly off at force, missing only by chance the close-quarter camera team set-up only yards away.

The end of the chase was Bill's own idea, a 'homage' to the death of Jayne Mansfield, where one of the cars smashes into the back of an eighteen-wheel truck, peeling off its roof like a can of sardines.

In one year (1957), he had the rare distinction of being cast as the assailant who slices Frank Sinatra's vocal chords in The Joker Is Wild and whips Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock.

In 1963, Hickman and fellow stuntman Alex Sharp witnessed a bank robber, Carl Follette, speed by them on the Ventura Freeway near the Laurel Canyon off-ramp.

The car chase eventually ended in a North Hollywood parking lot where Follette was shot and killed in an exchange of gunfire with the police.