From left, Gary Busey, Jan-Michael Vincent and William Katt in Big Wednesday. Image: Idmb
Jan-Michael Vincent, the star of what is arguably surfing’s best movie, died last month. According to the death certificate, Vincent died at 4:24 p.m. on February 10. The cause of death is listed as cardiac arrest that stemmed from bradycardia. He passed away in a Buncombe County, North Carolina hospital at the age of 73.
Vincent’s passing wasn’t reported on until TMZ released his death certificate. Although Vincent was known to the non-surf world mostly because of his leading role as Stringfellow Hawke in the ’80s television show Airwolf, it was his Big Wednesday character, Matt Johnson, that surfers will likely remember him for.
Throughout his career, he starred in films like Hooper and Hard Country and was nominated for Golden Globes for a 1971 film called Going Home and an early ’80s television series called Winds of War.
In real life, too, Vincent was a surfer. In 1967, after a talent scout discovered him on the side of the road in Bakersfield, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. He soon moved to Malibu and immersed himself in the blossoming surf scene there.
Jan-Michael Vincent’s character in Big Wednesday would eventually become eerily similar to his life off the screen: a troubled man with glaring good looks and an immeasurably deep well of talent who struggled with substance abuse.
After a few years of fame that ended with Airwolf—although he did land a few roles here and there in the years after—Vincent fell into a deepening spiral of self-destructive activity. A string of arrests for cocaine-related offenses, bar room fights in the ’80s, a broken neck in a drunk driving accident in 1997, and an infection that cost him the lower half of his right leg in 2010 all added to his fall from grace. According to reports, he spent 60 days in a California jail after violating his probation.
Throughout all that, however, Vincent remained engrained in both surfing and Hollywood as a supremely talented person and a warning about the dangers of addiction. His understated words at Waxer’s funeral in Big Wednesday seem fitting now: “I’d just like to say that he was a good surfer and a really great guy. He had a nice cutback. He rode the nose real well.”
