David S Cass, Sr

Thank you for joining, we invite you to share your favorite memories with our beloved Dave. When family is ready, we will announce the day of Dave's life celebration.

Here are some words from one of Dave's good friend, Neil Summers:

"A life long friendship has come to an end with the passing of Dave Cass. We first met up on the dusty streets of the movie town old Tucson in Arizona. It was some 60 years ago that we were both hired to work on “Mc Lintock” A John Wayne film that was filming a big fight scene in some mud. Between takes Dave and I visited and talked about our hopes and dreams for  a career in Hollywood. At this time there was ample work and dozens of films, TV shows industrial films and commercials, but it Arizona was a right to work state and the pay was Atrociously small ($10 a day or $15 a day, if you were one of the riders, needed for certain scenes.) David and I grew closer with every meeting and the conversation always ended up with us acing in Hollywood. Our lives were put in high gear when in 1966 a New York television series called “High Chaparral” Came to town and with this job came stunt coordinator Henry Wills. It was not long when Henry started to favor Dave and I for small stunts and parts. Just as things were cooking for us, Dave was drafted into the army in the middle of the season one of “Chaparral” We don’t see Dave for many months until we saw tall and lanky Dave straw into the set (he was on leave, his mother was dying.) Dave asked me to go with him to see his mom, which I did and it was not long before we were talking about Hollywood again  . Dave went and was honorably discharged and we were still filming “High Chaparral” only now we were on season four. Dave was immediately picked up again by Henry and was told to try Hollywood and Henry promised Dave he would work him if he made the move. He did and Henry’s promise was good. We always stayed in touch and after a few months Dave started to come back to Arizona on projects that he was now the stunt coordinator. I was still in Arizona, not able to easily give up all the work ( I was now recently employed on the T.V. series “ Gunsmoke”) Which found dozens of episodes in and around Tucson. And I was getting work from Dave on his projects. He told me he was happily entrenched in California and it was the right move for him to have made  (at this time Dave  was dubbing for actor Robert Brown on a T.V. series called “Here come the brides”  it was the era of big leading man and at Dave’s height put him in demand diving for Robert Mitchum, Kenne Rogers, Gene Evans and many more.  I was in Utah on “Rough night in Jericho” starring Dean Martin and Henry Wills was there as he was Dean’s regular double. It had been (I guess) about 4 years since Dave had relocated to L.A. and Henry Wills one day echoed what he’d done for Dave, he still would help me if I permanently moved to Hollywood. Well I did, and for the rest of my career in LA. Dave was by now in a position to help me also ( which gave me confidence) as I did a lot of work for Dave (and henry hadn’t forgotten me either). Only a few years ago Dave and I were working on “Avenging Angel”  for the hallmark channel and Dave was now on full charge as he was now the director. We didn’t have much time to talk, but we did anything - a lot of memories came flooding back from our days in the dusty streets of old Tucson. We looked at each other with giant smiles on our faces and the last words for that day came from when he said - “brother, Neil, we made it.”

-Neil Summers