Every great television series pitches into each episode with a great song -- a
theme song. For
The Fall Guy, this was "The Unknown Stuntman," penned by songwriters Glen A. Larson, Gail Jensen, and Dave Somerville, and sung by none other that series star
Lee Majors (aka
The Six Million Dollar Man).
The twangy, country-tilted song generally laments the plight of the Hollywood
stuntman, taking all the risks and receiving all the injuries to make the leading man look heroic and 'get the girl.' It is somewhat unusual for its genre in that it calls out a great many contemporary actors and actresses by name, and makes allusions to some others. For example, the singer wistfully observes that he'll never be elected
president, likely a commentary on the then-recent ascendance of former actor
Ronald Reagan to that office.
Other people named include a bevy of lovely ladies beginning with Major's ex-wife
Farrah Fawcett ("I've been seen with Farrah"), as well as having "been on fire with
Sally Field, gone fast with
a girl named Bo", having "gotten burned over
Cheryl Tiegs, blown up for
Raquel Welch," then "a morning dive with
Jackie Smith, I crash in the night with
Cheryl" -- though the singer sadly relates that it is always the star, and not the stuntman, who gets the girl in the end. Male stars mentioned, in the context of the stuntman being the one to make them look good, are
Robert Redford,
Clint Eastwood and, at some length,
Burt Reynolds.
All of this is intertwined with recitation of the kinds of stunts which the stuntman engages in -- falling from tall buildings, rolling brand new cars, jumping open drawbridges, and so forth. Interestingly, this is only one aspect of the show itself, and something of a background aspect at that. The primary theme of
The Fall Guy was that the title character, Colt Seavers, was not simply a stuntman, but one who, in order to make ends meet, was a bounty hunter in his off-time. It was the weekly bounty hunting activity which drove the action of the show, and so it is something of a surprise that the title song is entirely about the plight of the stuntman, and not at all the actually riskier situation of the bounty hunter catching dangerous criminals. But, naturally, the life of a bounty hunter doesn't give quite as much of a basis for all that titillating
name dropping.
You can
watch the original here, and
a much abbreviated "in-episode" performance here.