Edward Dean Jeffries (February 25, 1933 – May 5, 2013) was an American custom car designer and fabricator, as well as stuntman and stunt coordinator for motion pictures and television programs based in Los Angeles, California.
[2][3] A brother, James Eddie, was born December 2, 1935, in Osage, a twin to Evonne, but died the next day.
[4] As a young man, after returning from Germany, he started doing pinstriping on the side, while working as a grinder in a machine shop.
Jeffries recalled the day in September, 1955: "Jimmy knew that I was a pinstriper and had met me through Lance Reventlow and Bruce Kessler.
[12] He built The Mantaray (which took the Best Experimental car award at the 1964 Pomona car show and appeared on Steve Allen's The Tonight Show,[13] and in Bikini Beach),[6] Python (a prototype for Ford[14]), Black Beauty (from The Green Hornet),[15] the Monkeemobile,[16] the Landmaster from Damnation Alley (1977),[17] the Moon buggy (that James Bond steals in Diamonds Are Forever), the trolley (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit).
[18] He did all of the custom fabrication work on the movie Convoy in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he rented the shop from Burns Truck & Parts.
[19] Jeffries worked on the design and initial fabrication for the Batmobile (for the 1966 Batman TV series), but when the studio wanted the car sooner than he could deliver, he turned the project over to George Barris who hired Bill Cushenbery to perform the fabrication work.
[22] While working on the Warner Bros. lot he met and later married Rosalee "Row" Berman in Los Angeles on October 17, 1982.
Berman, who was born July 20, 1941, died after a long illness on August 11, 2008, in Los Angeles at the age of 67.