Kim Kahana, the stunt performer, teacher, coordinator and war hero who played Chongo on the kids show Danger Island and doubled for Charles Bronson in several action films, has died. He was 94.
Kahana died Monday of natural causes at his home in Groveland, Florida, his wife, Sandy Kahana, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Kahana, 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds, taught stunts to many thousands of students since the mid-1970s in six-week courses that took place in Chatsworth, California, and Central Florida. Many went on to have thriving careers in show business.
He also had six different black belt degrees — he taught martial arts, too — and worked as a professional bodyguard protecting Hollywood types.
A native of Hawaii, Kahana appeared in his first film as a biker in the Marlon Brando-starring The Wild One (1953) and was an extra in other movies before he realized that stunt performers got paid more than he did.
He learned stunts and stunt coordinating from Yakima Canutt, an honorary Oscar recipient who doubled for Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind (1939) and staged the iconic chariot race in Ben-Hur (1959).
On The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, a Saturday morning kids program that ran on NBC from 1968-70 and then in syndication, Kahana appeared in the show’s live-action serial Danger Island as Chongo, a native who spoke no English but communicated using animal and bird sounds.
“I got a call for an audition for the part,” he recalled in 2012. “Jumped on the table, did a back flip and was hired.”
“Uh-oh, Chongo!” was the catchphrase employed to trigger each adventure on the segments that starred Jan-Michael Vincent and were directed by Richard Donner.
Kahana’s lithe athleticism and stature meant he could double for Stefanie Powers on The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and Sally Field on The Flying Nun.
His résumé as a stunt performer, coordinator and/or actor included Cool Hand Luke (1967), Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), Soylent Green (1973), Earthquake (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), MacArthur (1977), Good Guys Wear Black (1978), Passenger 57 (1992) and Jeepers Creepers (2001).
“Through hundreds of movies and television shows, Kahana has been beaten, burned, sliced, dropped, shot at, catapulted, hit by cars and exploded, sometimes merely in illusion, sometimes in fact,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in 1987. “He’s been paid $52,000 to drop by means of a cable from a jet helicopter to a hole in the side of a 747.”
That stunt was for Airport 1975 (1974).
Kahana was born on Oct. 16, 1929, in Lanai City, Hawaii. He left school in the third grade, came to the U.S. mainland as a stowaway and at 13 hitchhiked all the way to Boston, where an aunt and uncle lived.
He got to work with bandleader Xavier Cugat and as a knife and fire dancer in a stage show called The Samoan Warriors.
Kahana received two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his service during the Korean War. He emerged from a mass grave after an enemy firing squad had left him for dead and was blinded in his left eye from an exploding grenade.
In 1955, he was the lone survivor of a plane crash in Texas that killed the other 32 people on board. “I walked away without a scratch,” he said.
When Kahana drove a friend to an audition on his motorcycle, he was spotted by a casting agent and asked to come inside, leading to his gig on The Wild One.
His career in Hollywood gained steam in the ’60s, working in such films as the Elvis Presley starrers Fun in Acapulco (1963) and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) and on TV shows including The Time Tunnel, The High Chaparral and Ironside.
When The Brady Bunch went to Hawaii in 1972 during the show’s fourth season, Kahana could be seen doing a fire dance on an episode that also featured Vincent Price. Later, he found regular work on Kung Fu and Nickelodeon GUTS.
He stepped in for Bronson on films including The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Mechanic (1972), Death Wish (1974), Mr. Majestyk (1974) and Breakout (1975).
Among his students who went on to Hollywood careers were stunt performers Heidi Schnappauf, Tom Place, Billy D. Lucas (double for Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Joanne Lamstein (double for Barbra Streisand).
Kahana was a longtime member of SAG’s Safety Investigating Team, and his incredible life story was told in the 2023 documentary Kim Kahana: The Man Who Changed Hollywood.
He did rigging for a movie just last year and was still teaching stunt work in his final days.
In addition to his wife, whom he married in 2005 — they met on Passenger 57 when she was an extra — survivors include his children, Tony, Kim Jr. and Debbie, and his grandchildren, Michael, Lance, Kalana and Josh, an author. Another son, Rick, died in 2012 of a heart attack at age 51.
All his kids followed dad into the stunt business.