Bill Austin Pearson (May 19, 1920 – November 28, 2002) was an American jockey in thoroughbred horse racing, a quiz-show winner, an art expert and dealer and an actor.

Pearson took the advice and got a job at the Le Mar Stock Farm at Santa Anita, as a stable boy and hot walker.

As a result, Pearson was hospitalized for nine months, having received a concussion, multiple broken ribs and other fractured bones.

A fellow rider, Jackie Westrope gave him a book on quilts, telling him; "because it looks like you're going to spend the rest of your life sewing".

Pearson recalls that he began to really study "the design, the needlework, the stitches", and he became an expert, which forged a path to his interest in other art objects.

Through the friendship he had developed with Huston, he opened an art gallery in La Jolla, California, later relocating it to San Francisco.