In February 1978, Burt Reynolds, who died Thursday at the age of 82, and the crew of “Hooper” shook up Tuscaloosa. Reynolds, along with co-star Sally Field, his then-girlfriend, Robert Klein and Jan-Michael Vincent, flew in from Hollywood to shoot stunt scenes in and around the demolition of the old Northington hospital complex, making way for what’s now University Mall.

Director Hal Needham had helmed Reynolds and Field in the 1977 film "Smokey and the Bandit," a $300 million worldwide hit that helped the former stuntman fund his dream project, "Hooper," about an aging performer (Reynolds) being chased by a young punk upstart (Vincent).

For a couple of weeks, Reynolds, Vincent and stunt performers drove hot cars through, around and under falling smokestacks, walls of fire, and gusts of debris expelled from collapsing buildings. The film crew nicknamed the perilous Northington shoot "Damnation Alley."

Warner Bros. had brought in about 150 cast and crew in late January, and hired hundreds of locals as extras, and in various supoprt services. The city of Tuscaloosa earned about $2,900 for eight firefighters with trucks on standby, and $1,000 for a licensing fee. Another $10,000 was paid to 47 off-duty Tuscaloosa police officers, who provided crowd control for fans turning out to get a glimpse of the stars. Shooting began in Tuscaloosa on Feb. 1, 1978. Needham estimated they spent about $1.2 million, nearly one-sixth of the film's total budget, on the 14 Northington stunts.

Crowds watched a Volkswagen shoot 50 feet in the air; saw Klein, playing the director in the film-within-a-film, yelling at Reynolds and Vincent from a helicopter; and endured seemingly slow-motion chases and stunts that took the better part of each bitterly cold February day, 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Photos from The Tuscaloosa News archives show stars and extras sporting bushy hair and mustaches, wrapped in down jackets for warmth.

Rumors ran rampant of Burt-and-Sally sightings: buying beer at the Bama Mall Kroger, dining at former restaurant hotspot The Landing (where the Olive Garden restaurant is now), and at various homes and residences around the city. Grown-ups left work and kids skipped schools to visit the set. Young women climbed nearby pecan trees when crowds grew too thick to see through. Students at nearby Northington Elementary were warned about explosions, smoke and noise, and one day, marched out to meet some of the filmmakers.

”(Reynolds) came out with a big old cheesy grin; I didn’t get to shake his hand because I got trampled by a bunch of shrieking fifth-grade girls,” said Ben Lower, then a fourth-grader at Northington.

Footage shot in and around Tuscaloosa appears during several action-filled minutes near the closing of "Hooper," followed by a bridge jump shot along Highway 78, near Sumiton. Reynolds, coming off "Smokey and the Bandit," "Deliverance," "The Longest Yard," and "Semi-Tough" was the biggest movie star in the world at the time, having topped the list of box-office leaders five years in a row, a feat equaled only by Tom Cruise and Bing Crosby.